Saints, sages and impostors

perceptions about readers and Reading in Pernambuco at the beginning of the XIX

Abstract

Even at the beginning of the 19th century, the illiterate perceived books, reading and readers as something outside their lives that bordered on the magical world. Some even denied this magical character by discrediting the knowledge that could be acquired through books. The past, other languages could never be learned by reading, only by living. Others, however, valued the ability to read andoften associated it with the clergy. This ambivalence observed among the illiterate was not always repeated among the educated. The educated people valued the knowledge derived from books, they knew its importance. However, the article presents some comments from contemporary observer. The observer related the arrival of the lights to Pernambuco and the adjacent captaincies as something harmful, because its literate inhabitants were not mentally prepared for this great change. What caused the arrival of books and ideas in the region was a set of misinterpretations and misconceptions that caused the 1817 Revolution in a certain way.