Censura e prosa de ficção: perspectivas distintas de instruir, divertir e edificar?

Abstract

Censorship and fictional prose: different ways of educating, entertaining and enlightening? This essay proposes an analysis of the relationship between censorship, fiction and literary culture in the Portuguese-Brazilian world, principally between 1768 and 1821. These temporal limits, however, are not strictly adhered to. In order to clarify my arguments, whenever necessary, elements prior to 1768 or situations after 1821 are analysed. First, in an attempt to justify my use of the word novel to denominate all book of fiction, I discuss the designations, styles and historical contexts of fictional writing, principally during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Second, I identify the reasons that led Portuguese censorship to prohibit certain books of fiction, relating such prohibitions to notions, common during the period under examination, which held fiction in a derogatory light. Finally, I try to understand how authors and their admirers sought to defend fictional publications, as well as the reasoning employed by detractors in denigrating them.