Escritos e guardados: cem anos de escrita privada de uma família baiana ao longo do século XX

Abstract

This text is the result of an investigation into private writing practices (CHARTIER, 1991) maintained by Egydio Lopes d’Almeida and his descendants, whose texts form the Lopes d’Almeida collection. The study started from the following thesis: The practice of family writing, committed to recording daily life, in the public and private spheres, and sporadic events that are important for the group, works as a mechanism for systematizing and maintaining family memories. The research was guided by the theoretical-methodological principles of the Social History of Written Culture (PETRUCCI, 1999, 2003; CASTILLO GÓMEZ, 1995, 2003; SÁEZ SANCHEZ, CASTILLO GÓMEZ, 1999) and aimed to uncover the cultural practices related to production and reception of texts, of different genres, maintained by the descendants of Egydio Lopes d'Almeida throughout the 20th century. Their practices showed a wide production of texts, of different genres, loaded with symbology, as a resource for producing memories and maintaining the essential values of the family. Such a study contributes to the understanding of the subjects' relationship with writing, an object of power and distinction, to the historical reconstruction of writing practices in Brazil, gives access to sociabilities of the long twentieth century and offers a rich collection for linguistic and sociocultural studies.