This investigation looks at perspectives and narratives about the city of Recife, with the intention of discussing the following inquiries: Do these narratives constitute representations which eliminate and oppose themselves? Do these narratives express feelings of strangement and familiarity? For this analysis, the perspective of a continuous evolution in time was used, as well as Roger Chartierãs understanding of representations in "Cultural History: between practice and representations". The research included memoir accounts of Portuguese and Dutch writers that were in the early years of colonization, 16th and 17th centuries, as well as narratives from urbanists, geographers and contemporary journalists from the 30's and 50's of the 20th century. The interpretation carried out in the discussion, attempts to demonstrate that the representations contained in the narratives of the early days of the city have not dissipated, but have remained present in the cultural texture of the city, overlapping with more current representations. Yet, while the first representations express a sense of positivism, the more current narratives are full os the negativism that is typical of urbanists and journalists.
narratives; culture; representations