Caderno de recortes de Pedro Wayne: os bastidores de um escritor da região da Campanha (1931 – 1951)

Abstract

This thesis proposes the identification and analysis of the representations of Written Culture, as recorded by Pedro Wayne in a scrapbook. The temporal scope of the investigation covers the period from 1931, the initial milestone for the writer's recordkeeping, until 1951, the year of his passing. Through an immersion in this historical archive, the study seeks to problematize the underlying motivations for the organization of his literary productions in a scrapbook format, as well as to analyze the contribution of the practice of collecting clippings to the construction of his authorial identity and the dynamics of his publications. The research is situated within the field of History of Education, based on the tenets of Cultural History (Chartier, 1990, 2002, 2011, 2014; Pesavento, 2014). This theoretical approach offers a robust framework for understanding the interrelationships between culture and society, focusing on cultural practices, their representations, and the meanings attributed to them. Such a perspective enables the elucidation of social dynamics and the experiences of subjects over time, revealing both the shaping of human identities and the manifestation of memory in distinct historical contexts. The central concepts explored include "practices and representations" (Chartier, 1990, 2000) and "Written Culture" (Castillo-Gómez, 2003, 2012, 2020; Galvão, 2007, 2010). The contextualization of the personal archive's owner was carried out by exploring his biography and professional trajectory. The subsequent analysis was dedicated to the exploration of the various textual elements present in the scrapbook (articles, chronicles, letters, manuscripts, annotations), seeking to understand how writing practices revealed aspects of Pedro Wayne's intellectual formation and how the social, political, and cultural context of the time was fundamental for the scrapbook, in its entirety, to become his personal archive, with this being achieved through documentary analysis. From a cultural perspective, the study highlights the relevance of the scrapbook as a privileged source for understanding an individual and collective trajectory, evidenced by the representation of the textual elements arranged on its pages. Identified as a historical document that condenses information, formative experiences, and cultural practices, the object is perceived as a relic, as it preserves traces of the author's daily life and the circulation of relevant critiques and opinions from the period in which they were produced. The materiality of clippings, manuscripts, letters, annotations, and other documentary elements allows inferring that the writer's intention was to perpetuate his memory, and by selecting and preserving these records, he constituted his own personal archive. This archive, in turn, remains as a representation and testimony of the past, present, and future, serving as inspiration for the field of History of Education and as a potential source for other interdisciplinary studies with a focus on Cultural History.