Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: NATÁLIA MELCHUNA MADRUGA

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : NATÁLIA MELCHUNA MADRUGA
DATE: 20/11/2025
TIME: 14:30
LOCAL: Sala virtual [plataforma meet]
TITLE:

Natal, forever a Province? The Desire and Construction of the Modern City in Literature

KEY WORDS:

Cultural history; chronicles; urban life; imaginaries

PAGES: 68
BIG AREA: Ciências Sociais Aplicadas
AREA: Arquitetura e Urbanismo
SUBÁREA: Fundamentos de Arquitetura e Urbanismo
SPECIALTY: História da Arquitetura e Urbanismo
SUMMARY:

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modernization, already happening in Europe, intensified and expanded to cities across different parts of the world. In Brazil, and more specifically in Natal, the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, a small city in the country’s northeast, this movement was also present. It was a demand of the local intellectual elite, who, in contact with various metropolises already engaged in this process, began to desire the same for their city, seeing it also as an opportunity to erase the colonial past that still exists in its streets. The dream of modernity, together with the mixture of feelings that emerged over years of profound transformations, found expression in literary texts produced by this elite. This was not a reality exclusive to Natal, modernity also permeated literature, with authors from different parts of the world portraying in their narratives lived experiences and impressions of cities in transformation. Today, these literary works serve as a way to access the collective imaginaries and sensibilities mobilized during that period. Engaging with authors from different contexts allows us to observe the peculiarities of diverse processes of urban modernization. This research, therefore, employs the theoretical and methodological of urban cultural history to examine the creation and consolidation of imaginaries of modernization as represented in literature. The study focuses on the case of Natal, where the most widely circulated literary genre in the twentieth century was the newspaper chronicle. However, it also proposes to explore European, Latin American, and other Brazilian authors who wrote novels and chronicles reflecting on their impressions of modernizing cities, thus enabling an understanding of the particularities and multiple facets of this process.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Interno - 1345114 - JOSE CLEWTON DO NASCIMENTO
Externo à Instituição - HUMBERTO HERMENEGILDO DE ARAUJO - UFRN