Ânimos juvenis e tradição literária: a imprensa estudantil no Maranhão oitocentista (1870- 1900)

Abstract

It presents the printed matter organized by the Maranhão student community which, imbued with youthful spirit and literary tradition, worked for the intellectual development of their homeland and were part of a very expressive student press at the end of the 19th century. The objective is to analyze the movement of student publications that circulated in Maranhão in the 19th century, identifying and rescuing the newspapers that composed this type of periodical activity, presenting aspects related to their materiality, the subjects and institutions that were part of their social production, as well as the themes most portrayed in these prints. The theoretical and methodological approach is based on the assumptions of Cultural History and Cultural History of the Media, with the contribution of bibliographical and documentary research: the first based on studies on Press History, Press History of Maranhão and History of Student Prints; the second, centered on auxiliary typographic fonts; in the figure of the newspapers Diário do Maranhão (1855-1919), O Paiz (1863-1886) and Pacotilha (1880-1939) for the identification of titles belonging to the initiative of the student body; and in main sources, the student newspapers themselves, together with the National Library's Digital Hemeroteca and the Rare Collection of the Benedito Leite Public Library to find and rescue these materialities. The results of the investigation record the circulation of 22 newspapers organized by students between the years 1870 and 1900. The student press from Maranhão was materialized in small four-page newspapers that had irregular periodicity, however its creation and maintenance involved several actors and institutions which aimed to use newspapers as an object against the cultural and intellectual apathy that had taken hold in Brazilian Athens.