Para aprender, viajar e escrever : uma carta para Domingos de Oliveira Maia (1821)

Abstract

Through the set of 27 letters acquired in an antique dealer from Porto in 2011, all addressed to Domingos de Oliveira Maia and dated back to 1821, we sought to questione the potential of this historical source as a document for social, political and even aesthetic study in a particular year of the history of Portugal. From the epistolographic universe, submitted to internal and external criticism, we present and analyze, with greater focus, one letter that narrates the journey between Porto and Lisbon and which we consider exemplary about the presentation and interpretation of the período through the voyage, its places and the individuals that travel and meet in it. Letter and journey are, in the nineteenth century, as axes of a literary and also documentary expression aspects that we seek to address in this article.