Um andarilho por vocação

continuidades e reelaborações da flânerie na crônica de Lima Barreto

Abstract

This article discusses the ways in which the chronicle by Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881-1922) dialogued with the transformations of the street in Rio de Janeiro through a particular bodily experience, reworking the allegory of the Parisian flâneur. From the analysis of stylistic options undertaken to organize displacements through urban space, the writer's chronicle was placed in dialogue with Walter Benjamin's theoretical and historical formulation about the flâneur, so that we could identify continuities and ruptures in Lima Barreto's participation in the press Brazilian. Taking us on tours of the suburbs of the reformed capital at the beginning of the 20th century, we will see that the chronicler chose the subjective experience of traveling through the city as a “walker” to renew the representation of flânerie. The record achieved could be read as an authentic literary and media intervention in the new urban landscape built by the Republic in Brazil.