Numa e a Ninfa: dilemmas and impasses of the republican society formation

Abstract

The novel Numa e a Ninfa portrays subjects and problems which they would be recovered later by some classical interpretations of the republican society formation. The particularity risen by the relationship between the private and public spheres in Brazil is constant in those interpretations since the economical and political structures inherited from the colonial and imperial past were carried on in the republican society. This paper deals with some elements from the relationship between the private and public spheres during the First Republic (1889-1930), having as a point of reference the mentioned Lima Barreto’s novel because this carioca writer describes, in the fictional level, the dilemmas and impasses which the Brazilian thought would face during the moment of the crisis of the First Republican political institutions and the coming of the Revolution of 1930.