“The Vocation of High Speeds”: A Modernism in 1920s Paraíba through the Chronicles and Novel by José Américo de Almeida

ABSTRACT

By founding magazine Era Nova, a group of young writers promised to broaden horizons before everyone’s eyes. The purpose of this text is to understand the efforts to elaborate the modern and its impact on the life of the Paraíba population based on the chronicles and a novel written by José Américo de Almeida. I argue that there was a modernist movement in Paraíba since the early 1920s, and that it was built on foreign references, but based on local traditions, values and routines, discussed in the state’s intellectual circuits for a long time.

Keywords:
José Américo de Almeida; Modernism in Paraíba; 1920’s