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sua maior engrenagem para o desenvolvimento a cultura letrada e erudita. A Biblioteca
Provincial, O Instituto do Ceará e a Academia Cearense de Letras ratificam esse projeto
inaugurando uma tradição de produção científica e literária na cidade, que buscava introduzir o
progresso através de suas produções, assim como incentivar a busca de uma identidade local
por meio da produção do conhecimento sobre a história colonial da Província, sobre a geografia
local e os impactos positivos da introdução de tecnologias para o progresso socioeconômico do
estado. Portanto, o imaginário do progresso pelas letras, influenciado pelos postulados
cientificistas e civilizatórios europeus e a busca de uma identidade local e nacional configuram
as bases do imaginário desse período.
Palavras-chave: Leitura. Prática de Informação. História de Fortaleza.
ABSTRACT
This summary is a small glimpse of the dissertation: A Cartography of the Reading, presented to
the Post-Graduation Program in Information Science of the Federal University of Ceará. The
research sought to investigate the reading and the reader context of the city of Fortaleza in the
second half of the nineteenth century, under the informational bias. It is intended, as an
intention, to recover part of the historiography and local literature of this phase, trying to
understand how the socio-cultural dynamics influenced the intellectual productions of this
period and the readings made by the population. In order to do so, we investigated the literary
associations that emerged in the city at that time, and attributed to them the first literary
productions of Ceará. Understanding the city and its complexities as the motto of the plot of
many of these literary works, we investigated how the intellectuals of these groups saw the city
and retract their daily life, in addition to seeking to identify the literary and reading influences of
these subjects. In the search to draw a cartography reader of Fortaleza, the concepts of
information, reading, imagery and memory are approached in order to understand the local
historical context under the bias of information theories. In this sense, we tried to answer the
problematic: How did the formation of the reader's imagination strengthen in the second half of
the nineteenth century? From this perspective, the general objective of the study was to
investigate the formation of the reader's imagination in the second half of the nineteenth
century, focusing on institutions: the Provincial Library, the Ceará Institute and the Ceará
Academy of Letters. The specific objectives were: a) to identify the information and production
flows of knowledge of the city at that time; ; b) map the cultural milestones that contributed to
the formation of the imaginary reader of the capital; c) to know the socio-cultural and historical
panorama of Fortaleza at the end of the 19th century; and d) to understand the role of the three
institutions chosen in the construction of the city and its daily reader in the aspects of
assimilation, production and dissemination of information and knowledge. As a methodological
strategy, the research is exploratory and descriptive, being a bibliographical and documentary
research, with a qualitative approach, using the historical method. It is concluded that the
reading panorama of the city of Fortaleza in the period was formed by a small information
network made up of newspapers, book shops and book associations, as well as a historical
context with strong influences of the European civilizational ideals, in the so-called Belle Époque.
The imaginary reader of the time was based on a civilizational political project based on the
philosophy of the lights and the scientific ideas imported from Europe. The intellectual elite
aspired to a cultured society, and as this same elite circulated in the political and power spheres
of the city, they idealized a society that had as its greatest cog in the development of literate and
erudite culture. The Provincial Library, the Ceará Institute and the Ceará Academy of Letters
ratify this project by inaugurating a tradition of scientific and literary production in the city that
sought to introduce progress through its productions, as well as to encourage the search for a
local identity through the production of knowledge about the province's colonial history, local
geography, and the positive impacts of introducing technologies for the state's socioeconomic
progress. Therefore, the imaginary of progress through the letters, influenced by the European