A Leitura do Literário no Brasil

Tensões e contradições establecidas nas práticas de leitura

Abstract

It is critically consider issues related to Brazilians’ literary education,
analyzing how their reader’s history was built (and the myth of the nonreader),
in a reading practice sociology approach. We seek to understand
who the readership of colonial Brazil was until the early twentieth century,
and how the transition of a European culture consumer’s country to a
country that produces its own culture was. Four major events that
contributed to promote the reading culture in Brazil are discussed: a) the
censorship abolition in 1820; b) the end of the government monopoly over
the press in 1821; c) the establishment of higher education in Brazil in 1827;
d) investments in public education, particularly for women, around 1834; e)
the professionalization of writers. The story of the book and readers’
education were constituted between the habit of servitude and the desire for
freedom.