Modern City and llnesses: Kafka's and Machado de Assis's impressions

Abstract

This article seeks to point out and interpret the impressions of the modern city, in its moment of emergence between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, by the writers Franz Kafka and Machado de Assis. In the case of Kafka, a tourist trip to Paris in 1910 is discussed here, and in Machado's his short story "Capítulo dos Chapéus", published in 1884. It demonstrates how, in both cases, writers establish a relationship between the metropolitan experience and the emergence of illnesses in the body and soul.