Modernização e exclusão social na Belle Époque carioca : uma análise da obra O subterrâneo do Morro do Castelo, de Lima Barreto

Abstract

This study aims to analyze O Subterrâneo do Morro do Castelo, by Lima Barreto, with an emphasis on the critique of urban modernization in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the Belle Époque. The research is situated within the field of Cultural History and seeks to understand how the author, through fiction, exposes the social and racial effects of urban reforms, particularly on the lower classes and Black population, who were often erased from official narratives of progress. Drawing on the historical context of the First Brazilian Republic and a close reading of the novel, the study examines how the narrative reveals the mechanisms of exclusion embedded in the modernization project. Taking into account Lima Barreto’s trajectory — marked by marginalization and structural racism — the analysis frames literature as a space of resistance, denunciation, and symbolic elaboration of the period’s social inequalities.