Da documentação das Academias Brasílicas na Bahia setentista: edição semidiplomática e sócio-história

Abstract

This research aims to present a semi-diplomatic edition and a socio-historical study of twentythree letters written by six acadêmicos brasílicos during the eighteenth century. Of these authors, three belonged to the Academia Brasílica dos Esquecidos—Caetano de Brito e Figueiredo, Joseph da Cunha Cardoso, and Sebastião da Rocha Pita—and three were members of the Academia Brasílica dos Renascidos—Antonio Ferreira Gil, João Ferreira Bittencourt e Sá, and Joseph Mascarenhas Pacheco Coelho de Mello. The corpus consists of eighteenthcentury manuscripts preserved at the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, within the collection of Documentos Avulsos relating to Bahia and Paraíba. The study is aligned with two of the research agendas proposed by the Programa para a História do Português Brasileiro (PHPB) (Castilho, 2019): (a) the historical-philological field and (b) sociohistorical linguistics. It also corresponds to the current stage of research conducted by the Núcleo de Estudos em Língua Portuguesa at the Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (UEFS) and seeks to contribute to other research networks, such as the Corpus Eletrônico de Documentos Históricos do Sertão. The editorial criteria adopted for the documentary edition were based on the guidelines established by the Centro de Estudos, Pesquisa e Documentação Paleográfica do Memória e Arte (Lose, 2017). Accordingly, the research pursued two main objectives: (a) to produce a conservative semidiplomatic edition of the letters, preserving their original characteristics as faithfully as possible; and (b) to examine how the historical circumstances of the eighteenth-century colonial period, particularly during its second half, influenced the Portuguese used by the scriptores in this context. To accomplish these objectives, interdisciplinary theories and methodologies were articulated within the framework of Historical Linguistics, following the proposals of Mattos e Silva (2001, 2004, 2008), among others. Within agenda (a), after locating, organizing, and editing the corpus, the manuscripts were subjected to a palaeographic interpretation, including an analysis of their materiality in order to relate their physical characteristics to the history of their production (Lose, 2017; Carneiro, 2024, among others). Within agenda (b), the study adopted the evidential paradigm (paradigma indiciário) (Ginzburg, 1989; Espada Lima, 2012; Petrucci, 2003; Castillo Gómez, 2003, among others), situating the scriptores within their social circumstances in order to understand the motivations underlying the production of the letters. Sociobiographical profiles were also constructed based on Carneiro (2005). In pursuing a coherent investigation of the object of study—the letters written by the acadêmicos brasílicos— this research adopted Microhistory and the Social History of Written Culture as its principal analytical approaches. Accordingly, the manuscripts were understood as both material and historical testimonies of eighteenth-century written culture. The findings shed light on aspects of colonial literate society, particularly with regard to writing practices associated with the acadêmicos brasílicos, while also demonstrating the importance of the semi-diplomatic edition for studies on the social history of Brazilian Portuguese. Finally, this research contributes to the expansion of eighteenth-century historical corpora and to the establishment of reliable sources for philological, historical-linguistic, and palaeographic research, thereby enabling a closer understanding of Portuguese in/of eighteenth-century Brazil.