La obligación de leer : las condiciones de lectura en los organismos de censura portugueses

Abstract

Este texto intenta presentar el modo de funcionamiento de la censura portuguesa entre mediados del siglo XVIII e inicio del XIX, prestando especial atención a los registros de lectura hechos por los censores acerca de novelas. Los pareceres de la censura son una buena manera de percibir cuáles eran los criterios de evaluación de novelas en la época, y permiten despejar la manera por la que sectores letrados reaccionaron con ese género que tenía gran circulación, pero era poco valorado en el interior de las Bellas Letras. Este texto también busca repensar el modo de comprender la acción de la censura en el Antiguo Régimen, mostrando que no era monolítica y extrapolaba el control de la difusión de escritos tenidos como peligrosos desde el punto de vista político, religioso o moral.

This article presents the operating mode of Portuguese censorship between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The article focuses specifically on reports made about novels. The study of censorship reveals the criteria used to evaluate novels at the time, and allows us to see the ways in which men of letters reacted to a genre that had a wide public, but little assumed value. The article also rethinks the ways of understanding censorship in the Old Regime, showing that it was varied in nature, and not exclusively concerned with the control of writings seen as dangerous in political, religious or moral ways.

This article presents the operating mode of Portuguese censorship between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The article focuses specifically on reports made about novels. The study of censorship reveals the criteria used to evaluate novels at the time, and allows us to see the ways in which men of letters reacted to a genre that had a wide public, but little assumed value. The article also rethinks the ways of understanding censorship in the Old Regime, showing that it was varied in nature, and not exclusively concerned with the control of writings seen as dangerous in political, religious or moral ways.