The Nation's Narrative: Literature as Urban and Social Transformations; Testimony in Belle Epoque Rio de Janeiro

“Nations – wrote Gellner – unlike the brotherhood of man favoured by the Enlightenment, are exclusive clubs” (Gellner, 1997:68). This exclusive club allegory may be applied to the Republican Regime installed in 1889 in Brazil, which would put into practice and would intensify the elite’s power project implanted since 1822, after the country’s independence. By the use of well succeeded strategies, popular masses were excluded from politics and were seen as dangerous and antagonists of the State, despite the fact of being constituted by the country’s inhabitants.