Abstract
The present article will analyze the roman-feuilleton The Enchanted Kingdom: chronicle sebastianista, by Tristão de Alencar Araripe Júnior, published in Gazeta de Notícias in 1878. The work tells the story of a messianic movement that settled in the sertão of Pernambuco between the years of 1836 and 1838 and which brought together hundreds of people, among them free countrymen, Indians and runaway slaves. Assuming that the choice of literature that filled the footnotes of that newspaper was not restricted to commercial criteria, but was also guided by the potential of the section to discuss burning social issues, the proposal here is to carry out the study of the booklet articulating it: the content of the Gazeta’s other columns; the immediate historical context of the publication; to the debates on the paths of abolition in Brazil and, finally, to the question of the protagonism of slaves in the struggles for freedom.
Keywords:
Press; Literature; Slavery; Abolitionism