The project aims to produce consistent knowledge about printed matter and ideas circulating between England, France, Portugal and Brazil during the “long nineteenth century” (1789 - 1914). Its main objectives include identifying and analysing the cultural, political and economic processes set in motion by the movement of ideas and of printed matter on a transnational scale, as well as examining the appropriation of these ideas in those four countries.

 

In order to deal with these questions, three main intersecting axes encompass the different researches:

1) Agents of exchange between countries (booksellers, publishers, typographers, editors, writers, translators, illustrators, journalists, censors, actors and actresses, theatre managers, readers, etc.);

2) Institutions and sites (libraries, circulating libraries, newsrooms, boards of censors, etc.);

3) Material forms and textual genres (newspapers, magazines, schoolbooks, novels, music scores, plays, etc.).

 

Those elements are investigated by 40 researchers from 23 research institutions from Brazil, France, England and Portugal. They are gathered in three main areas:

a) production of texts and printed matter and its dissemination;

b) circulation and reception of belles-lettres;

c) circulation and reception of journals (newspapers and magazines).

 

Our intention is to clarify the multiple circuits made by books and journals from Europe towards Brazil (and vice versa) and the ways trodden by printed matter inside Brazil. We also aim to measure the speed and intensity in which works, people and ideas travelled between England, Portugal, France and Brazil, and to evaluate the synchronicity of the interest aroused by the same books in different places. We expect, as well, to be able to deepen our knowledge about publishers, booksellers and theatrical entrepreneurs, considering their activity in different countries and to learn more about the books, magazines and plays presented in Brazilian and European bookstores and stages, paying special attention to translated works. Finally, we hope to identify the public for these works and plays and to examine their critical reception throughout the nineteenth century.

 

Emphasis should be put on the term circulation because what matters is to examine the movement between Europe and Brazil and not the unilateral flow of ideas and goods from Europe to Brazil. In other words, we want to think in terms of connection rather than in terms of dependence. Read +