Contribuição da imprensa e da literatura de Parnaíba para a formação do sistema literário piauiense

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the contribution left by literate men who lived in Parnaíba in the first half of the twentieth century for the formation of the Piauiense literary system. The focus is the relationship between literature and press ans its consequent unfolding in political and social life. To do so, we consulted primary sources like newspapers and magazines, which have not only allowed a direct contact with what has been produced of literary in such a period as well as have led to the construction of a historical-cultural context favorable to the formation of intellectual nucleus and, consequently, the promulgation of an active literary life in cafes, commercial houses, students guilds, associations and literate societies. The last three ones, by the way, came from the effort of those men in spreading literary culture in a city that little by little seemed to admit in its reality modernity aspects. Considering such conjecture we do not avoid here observing the relationship between the economic and educational systems and the press, as a synthesis of a chain of facts that culminated with the inclusion of Parnaíba in the list of literate cities in Brazil from the perspective of the formation of a literary system, with the arrival of literary producers who were conscious of their roles, of a vehicle for publishing works and of a public formed and increased after the foundation of educational institutes and gymnasiums. Newspapers and magazines are, therefore, the main support for this study, not only for having come before the publication of books and for representing the printing press vehicles by excellency of guilds and literate associations, but also for the record in their pages of advertisements, chronicles, news and sparse notes that helped the research in the construction of an interpretation of the history of literature in Parnaíba: how and when it is formed, and which the helping factors are. Part of the writers here investigated was fundamental in the constitution of literate promulgator nucleus in Piauí, like the foundation of the Piauiense Literate Academy.