BOOKS FROM MARANHÃO FOR READING OR CIVILITY?

Abstract

This article discusses two reading books written by an author from Maranhão and produced in Maranhão at Tipografias de Frias in the 19th century; cultural artifacts considered by us as civility manuals that were designed, produced and put into circulation, in an attempt to evaluate their role, influence and representation in primary education in the period. The aim is to understand the place of Aos Meus Meninos (1874) and Almanck de Memonças Brasileiras (1862) by Cesar Augusto Marques in the province in the light of the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Cultural History, crossing information from the network of news, disputes and agreements on this matter in the local press, in reports from Provincial Presidents, Inspectors of Public Instruction and Literary Delegates, as well as in correspondence exchanged between school authorities, teachers and the government, analyzing these reading books as object and source. Analyzing reading books by authors from Maranhão as manuals of civility designed, produced and put into circulation allows us to understand in this examination the treatment suggested by the mentors to the moralizing and disciplinary rules treated in the corpus of works that are based on the proposed codes of conduct and the adjustments of bodies imposed with the aim of promoting the control of drives and tensions through knowing how to be and knowing how to be.