Abstract
The present text examines the use of colours, in the sense of social colours, in the work of the writer Lima Barreto. Not only does the author introduce hues of colour with considerable frequency, he also explores different tonalities and connects them to social situations and his own readings of the post-abolition context in which he lived. As we know, in Brazil colours function as social markers of difference, encompassing socioeconomic, regional and gender factors, but also interpretative elements, since they also contain accusatory and aesthetic categories - always diacritical. At the same time as they translate social hierarchies, so these social colours also reinvest their own ambivalences in social contexts and in their manipulation by self-classifying individuals, especially the ambivalences mobilized by Lima Barreto himself, the creator of characters like Clara dos Anjos and Policarpo Quaresma.
Keywords:
Lima Barreto; social colours; discrimination; Post-Abolition in Brazil; social markers of difference
