O Carapuceiro by Miguel do Sacramento Lopes Gama: Press on an exclusionary Maturity in 19th Century Brazil

Abstract

This present article, after characterizing the eighteenth-century European moralist press and its reception in Latin America during the nineteenth century, contextualizing them within the framework of Enlightenment thinking and paying special attention to the concept of Mündigkeit (maturity, majority, emancipation), presents the Recife newspaper O Carapuceiro (1832–1847) by Miguel do Sacramento Lopes Gama. Then, through the analysis of fictional texts from the newspaper, it approaches the functionalization of the idea of Mündigkeit, which is present in the narrator’s reflections on Brazilian identity and in its design of an ideal of a national community for Brazil in order and progress, in which religion plays a predominant role and popular cultures of African origin are excluded.