ABSTRACT
Cities were aging and diminishing, becoming a place of perdition, sin and gloom, but countryside was a space of happiness and well-being. This ancient antinomy (rural world versus urban world) also constitutes an obsession for romantic literature: Almeida Garrett’s Viagens na minha terra, Júlio Dinis’s Pupilas do senhor Reitor, Cesário Verde’s poems or Eça de Queirós’s A Cidade e as Serras, are all examples of a generic nostalgia hardly facing the reign of engines, steam and gas lighting.
