GEOMETRY OF POWER: REGULATING READING PRACTICES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

Discourses on reading practices in the 19th century were divided between detractors and defenders of the novel, in time of great popularization of the genre, through the publication in newspapers. Among the figures involved, the Catholic Church and Freemasonry were in the spotlight, publishing opinionated articles on the theme, rejecting, on the one hand, the reading of certain authors, and, on the other, recommending moralizing readings. In a period of political and social transformations, the agenda on reading practices in these newspapers calls attention. In this context, this paper intends to analyze, through the theoretical precepts of Stuart Hall, about the centrality of culture, the motivations of the critical positioning on the novel in two doctrinaire newspapers, A Cruz (1861), a Catholic newspaper, and A Família (1872), a Masonic periodical, both published in Rio de Janeiro.