Diffusing political knowledge in illustrated magazines: a comparison

between the Portuguese ‘O Panorama’ and the British ‘The Penny Magazine’ in

the 1837-1844 periodJorge Pedro Sousa (jpsousa@ufp.edu.pt)

Elsa Simões Lucas Freitas, esimoes@ufp.edu.pt)

Sandra Gonçalves Tuna (stuna@ufp.edu.pt)

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Introduction

O Panorama1837-1868

Diffusion of cultural matters in general

The first three series only these are a direct imitation of The Penny Magazine

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Introduction

OBJECTIVE:Compare:

Penny Magazine

O Panorama

Methodological Approach

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Reflection on a specific item (politics), on the way this issue is approached in two similar periodical

publications from two different countries within the same time span

News, apart from their role as a medium for conveying information on external realities, constitute discursive entities with an identity of their own (Van Djik, 1998)

The conditions associated with the production of the text must necessarily be taken into account.

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1. Illustrated press in the mid nineteenth century: the general context and the cases of England and Portugal

• By mid nineteenth century in Europe, the illustrated press was taking its first steps, and rapidly became a very popular format mainly with the middle and upper classes

Examples of Magasin Pittoresque, Über Land und Meer and L’Univers Illustré

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1. Illustrated press in the mid nineteenth century: the general context and the cases of England and Portugal

The illustrations in these were a form of providing a visual counterpart to the text matter;

Endowed text with an increased narrative sense and rendering it easier for the reader to mentally re-enact the events at stake;

This was a time for colonial endeavours and armed conflict, which stimulated popular curiosity as to unknown places and destinations as well as providing ample material for illustration

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1. Illustrated press in the mid nineteenth century: the general context and the cases of England and Portugal

Two examples of periodical: the ‘Literary Repository of the Society of Medical Sciences’ and the ‘Magazine of the Society of the Friends of Letters’

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The reading audience of cultural periodicals was primarily composed by : • members of the

bourgeoisie • wealthy military men

with little schooling

The liberals, who had been exiled from the

country between 1828 and 1834, had already

contacted with this model of civic and

cultural intervention in England and in France,

and brought it to Portugal in the

aftermath of their triumph.

A group of liberals associated in order to form in Portugal a society that emulated the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge• Founders of the

Penny Magazine

1. Illustrated press in the mid nineteenth century: the general context and the cases of England and Portugal

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The Portuguese counterpart for the SDUK was founded in 1827 - Sociedade Propagadora dos Conhecimentos Úteis - a literal translation of the English Society’s name.

It was a philanthropic enterprise O Panorama

The Penny Magazine’s function as role model even influences the choice of publication day – Saturday –, which was the same for both periodicals the meaningful weekly pause

1. Illustrated press in the mid nineteenth century: the general context and the cases of England and Portugal

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Built into the notion of seriality is necessarily some conceptualization of waiting. The pause is a constitutive feature of periodical-ness, of all periodicities—there must be a break in time. What is important about this break is that it is the space that allows us to communicate. The media, first and foremost, is about communication, and without the pauses in the periodical schedules of the nineteenth century, there would be much less communication. (…) In the breaks in the narratives of periodicals and in the lapses in time—over a day, over a week, over a month—is where meaning resides. That pause is when the interaction and communication occurs, and that period of waiting and reading is the link between the past and the future. (Turner, 2002: 193-194)

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1. Illustrated press in the mid nineteenth century: the general context and the cases of England and Portugal

O Panorama

Targetted a wide audience (not

only ellites)

Price was affordable and

competitive

Used the most recent

typographical technologies (like

the Penny Magazine)

hydraulic press

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The layout of O Panorama (similar to Penny Magazine’s) was also adopted by O Museu Portuense (1838) e Arquivo Pitoresco (1857). The Revista Universal Lisbonense (1841) presented a slightly different model, with fewer illustrations and light and varied texts, with the same content diversity of O Panorama.

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2. The ´Panorama’ and ‘The Penny Magazine’: similarities and differences in the approaches adopted

as to political matters

• O Panorama was created under the patronage of Alexandre Herculano, an acknowledged humanist and historian, as well as one of the best-known Portuguese men of letters

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2. The ´Panorama’ and ‘The Penny Magazine’: similarities and differences in the approaches adopted

as to political mattersAs the Portuguese periodical assumes its imitative characteristic as to its British inspiration, similarities between both periodicals are necessarily

present

Images in order to reinforce textual

contents and rendering

them more ‘visual

Layout

Panorama

Penny Magazine

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