Educação nas cartas: a construção de um objeto de pesquisa

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, letters were the main form of communication used by the literate population. This practice emerged from the need for communication between people who were distant from each other. Yellowish letters kept in drawers and silenced by time have been arousing the interest of researchers who prioritize autobiography writing as a historical source. This article aims to present the construction of a research subject which prioritizes as a documentary corpus the letters written by the princesses Isabel and Leopoldina sent to their parents, the emperor and empress of Brazil, during the middle of the nineteenth century, the period when they were educated. The article consists of historical documentary research, and its main sources are the letters of the Brazilian princesses kept in the “Grão-Pará” historical archive, which writings are a living testimony of their authors' experiences during childhood and adolescence. The text establishes a dialogue with authors who discuss methods and techniques applied to the study of letters and autobiography documents. By assuming the role of source and research subject, the letters proved to be essential in the historical reconstruction of the education of these princesses by broadening the historian’s view on this topic, which occurred during the regency of the second emperor of Brazil.