A Estação: bourgeois ideology denounced in Quincas Borba

Abstract

This article focuses on the context in which the editorial market began in Brazil, in the 1870s, and analyzes the role of the periodical A Estação in disseminating cultural practices from Europe, particularly from France, and in getting people to read. The periodical from Germany consisted of two parts: a fashion supplement, which informed about the Parisian trends regarding clothes, decoration, etiquette and behavior, and a literary supplement produced in Brazil, in which Machado de Assis published short stories, poems, serialized stories and the novel Quincas Borba. Confronting the two versions of Quincas Borba, the first in fascicles and the second in book form, it can be seen that Machado realizes that each version has different readers, and the changes that he introduces are related to this aspect. However, in both versions, one notices the denunciation against cultural subservience and the attachment to appearance and it expresses a break with the values of the vehicle in which the first version is published.