Beyond pornography: a history of Brazilian erotic newspapers of the greater Nineteenth Century / Para além do pornográfico: uma história dos jornais eróticos brasileiros do grande século XIX

We analyzed pornography in Brazilian printed matter from the great 19th century with the objective of identifying how pornography was taken in its context of production and circulation in pornographic newspapers, starting from the place in which the historian of reading and literature considers appropriation and representation of the discourse of a given time. This identification is possible if we consider the studies of Literature History, as well as some concepts of Cultural History such as the notion of representation, appropriation, reading practice and reading community. We perceive that the appropriation of pornography in the 19th century prints is not limited to its function of excite the reader, because in the case of the newspaper The Grin, our main object of study, pornography appears as an instrument of political attack on the government of the time. In order to verify this appropriation, it was necessary to understand the possible dialogues between the pornographic newspapers of the great 19th century at the time of their enunciation, revealing elements that allow us to understand the representation of a part of the reading community of 19th century.


Pornographic press: research results
This article presents some results of research carried out in the doctoral studies 1 in Literature at the Federal University of Paraíba (2013Paraíba ( -2015 program, and has continued with activities developed in Graduate Program in Language Studies of the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco. The main objective of this research is to understand the pornographic discourse in Brazilian newspapers, and its relationship with the history of literature through pornography and politics in the newspaper The Grin 2 . For this purpose, the object of our study is the newspaper O Riso (The Grin)  and its relationship with other pornographic newspapers on the Brazilian editorial scene.
The newspaper, The Grin, circulated in Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century, a time marked by medical and law enforcement censorship with regard to discussions of sexuality (EL FAR, 2007). However, at that time, there was no explicit law punishing those responsible for the circulation of pornographic material or the buyers of "forbidden" material. El Far (2007, p. 289) points out that "the Republican Penal Code (1891), in turn, made no explicit mention of the production and dissemination of pornographic works, limiting itself to punishing possible indecent assault and public offenses" 3 .
Although there was no legal punishment (EL FAR, 2007), the reading of pornographic books and newspapers was viewed in a biased manner by society during the transition period from the19th to the 20th century. But this so-called censorship -if we can call it that, as there was no investigation of nor severe punishment for it -was not directed to all members of society who consumed pornographic products. The "great victims" of the reading community were women, either because of their exclusion from the pornographic publishing market, since pornographic literary genres were explicitly aimed at men, as expressed by the classifications attributed by the publishing market -"reading for men only", "men's novels", "reading for men", "short stories for 1 This research is a cut of the work developed in the doctorate and aims to demonstrate how there are gaps in the historiography of literature, especially if we consider the pornographic literature that circulated in newspapers at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. For a more detailed view of the pornographic trajectories of Brazilian newspapers in the great 19th century, see Azevedo (2015). 2 We have opted for linguistic updating of the words present in the newspapers of the 19th and 20th centuries in order to facilitate the reading of the article. 3 TN: All translations are ours unless otherwise stated. Translated from Portuguese: "o Código Penal Republicano (1891), por sua vez, não fazia menção explícita à produção e disseminação de obras pornográficas, limitando-se a punir possíveis atentados ao pudor e ofensas públicas". older men" were expressions commonly used to refer to pornographic texts -either by the "mental fragility" that was attributed to them by 19th century doctors and clergy.
As the term itself suggests, the plots that received this subtitle should be forbidden to women, seen at that time as people with fragile personalities, and therefore susceptible to the charms of the narrative. Men, on the contrary, able to discern the world of fiction from the everyday life of rules and good behavior, did not run the same risk. Therefore, they had unrestricted access to these readings. 4 (EL FAR, 2007, p. 290) We point out that this statement, made by the author, is about the titles of pornographic works published in newspapers. If on the one hand the market for pornographic literature restricted its dissemination to the male public, on the other hand, conservative society had no control of the "secret" readings of 19th century women, because, as Michel de Certeau (2012) poignantly observed, the reader is endowed with astuteness in order to deviate and subvert social norms in the name of reading practices. However, women were not the only ones repressed regarding the reading of pornographic novels. Men suffered physical harm. From the medical perspective, at the end of the 19th century (EL FAR, 2007), men who read "forbidden" novels also ran risks, and could develop sexually transmitted diseases (the advertising of products to cure syphilis 5 and gonorrhea 6 was frequent in the 19th century newspapers), mental weakness, weariness, anemia, among others.
Men, in turn, should avoid the celibate lifestyle, that is, the daily routine of dances, parties and flings. This type of behavior not only represented a refusal of the ideals of marriage and family, but also provoked the growth of cases of abortion, infanticide, prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases. In this medical perspective, the body inevitably suffered from an enormous weakness, becoming weak, powerless and "worn out". The dissemination of these ideas at the end of the 19th Century was so effective that the novel entitled A Worn Man (1885), signed by the pseudonym L.L., quickly gained ground in the columns of literary criticism of that period. It was the drama of a rich Brazilian, newlywed, who, after years of fooling around, was prevented from consummating his marriage. In the words published in a newspaper, he lacked the "essentials for marital functions" (A Semana, 9/5/1885). [...] Along with the provocative scenes, A Worn-out man, advertised as a "a man's novel", while loving, cuming and dying..., seemed also to believe in the scientific precepts propagated at the time. 7 (EL FAR, 2007, p. 301).
Notably, a common association made with regard to these pornographic genres was the practice of masturbation or the deviation from the order of procreation (ROUDINESCO, 2008), a punishable sin (DELUMEAU, 2003). This was the moral perspective, directly linked to the precepts of the Catholic Church. However, the 19th century medical perspective on mental processes was different: the practice of masturbation had another connotation, according to Roudinesco (2008), and assumeed the status of a disease -a pathology, a disease rather than a deviation from religious precepts.
The same path was followed by The Grin, which, even having circulated for only two years, stood out in the national scenario press with uninterrupted publication, and with the use of the most modern printing resources to disseminate, beyond the pornographic themes, an "acidic" criticism against the republican government.

Sexuality in the newspaper The Grin: a mix of pleasures
In order to understand the discourses present in newspapers, it is necessary to consider how they are made -their materiality and characteristics of production and circulation. Thus, we must consider the strategies of the The Grin editors, as well as the strategies of the editors and the diversity of literary genres that constituted the journal, taking into account its materiality and typographic resources as constitutive elements of the production of meaning. The main interest here is to perform a descriptive work to present our object of investigation: the newspaper itself, and its view of itself. .
An aspect that should be observed in the presentation of the periodical refers to the heteroclite nature of the newspaper. As Barbosa (2007a) points out, the newspaper is constituted in heterogeneity, in the plurality of the various literary genres that compose the printed material.
From this premise, we must recognize the presence of allegories in the pornographic nuances of The Grin, considering the fact that the plurality of literary genres employed in the newspaper becomes fertile ground for using allegory, especially with regard to the construction of satire. On the allegory present in 19th century newspapers, Barbosa (2007a) states that the use of allegorical language is a recurring element and, in this sense, there is a direct relationship between allegory and the composition of newspapers of the 19th century. Based on these observations, it is necessary to catalog the genres that make use of pornography as an allegory for the construction of satire.
Notably, the description of the newspaper The Grin takes into account the ways pornography is used in literary genres, which, by the very nature of the object, we will consider the present time of enunciation in the genres, taking into account the gender, the reading community and the utilitarianism 8 of the genres in its time, or, as Barbosa (2007a, p. 64) highlights: "what has been produced in the journals -including the literary -cannot be dismissed from the present of that utterance and cannot be read in a perspective of transparency with the reference" 9 . The newspaper The Grin, self-named "Artistic and humorous weekly newspaper", circulated in the federal capital, Rio de Janeiro, from May, 1911to November, 1912  This quantity of copies is relevant, since O Correio da Manhã (The Morning Post) , considered one of the main political newspapers in Brazil, which circulated during the transition period of the century and government, with 30,000 copies in 1910 (BARBOSA, 2007b).
Thus, a humorous and pornographic newspaper, or as Sodré (2011, p. 478) says, "ephemeral magazines" 10 , starting its circulation with 15,000 copies, then increasing to 19,000, shows that The Grin was widely accepted by the public, and enjoyed considerable sales.
With regard to the value of the newspaper, we see in Figure   For the most part, The Grin's covers were printed with photographs of dancers or naked actresses, but many issues emphasized the humor of caricatures and/or engravings with erotic themes. This aesthetic resource was made possible by advances in the printing technology of the time. According to Sodré (2011, p. 405), due to the modernization of society, the journalistic companies were "equipped with the necessary graphic equipment to perform their function" 12 .
Improvements in the field of print production caused the newspaper's production plan and, 10 Translated from Portuguese: "revistas efêmeras". 11 For a notion of the value of prices, "The Voice of the Worker, an organ of the Brazilian Workers' Confederation, presents more moderate and probably more realistic figures. According to this source, in 1908, the fabric factories of Rio de Janeiro rent houses to working families for 8$000, 10$000 and 30$000". (LOBO et al, 1971, p. 256). This means that the annual subscription to The Grin in the capital was equivalent to the monthly fee for a house for fabric factory workers. 12 Translated from Portuguese: "dotadas de equipamento gráfico necessário ao exercício de sua função". consequently, its circulation, changed "the newspaper's relations with the advertiser, with politics, with readers" 13 (SODRÉ, 2011, p. 405).  presented photographs of naked women, since the photographs of the time were in black and white. Notably, this is not an editorial decision, but the result of the technological limitations of the time. Similar to the covers, the photographs were present on the other pages of The Grin. From the paper's inception, the editors made their concern with the aesthetic dimension of the editorial enterprise explicit: "Our concern, our program is all about aesthetics [...] having as its only course the Beauty in all its manifestations" 14 (The Grin, Rio de Janeiro, 26/05/1911, n. 1, Anno I, p. 1).
Thus, even if the texts published in the pages of The Grin were directed to political or social criticism, the aesthetic concern with the presence of erotic images of women and/or caricatures that sought the excitement of the reader was prominent.
In this sense, the novels that were published by the newspaper presented three distinct models, which we will call a pornographic novel, epistolary pornographic novel and pornographic ✓Um Cobarde (A coward), by Catule Mendés. A novel divided in two parts. The first was published in n. 6, on June 29, 1911, and the second part in n. 8, on July 13, 1911.
It is worth noting that, in addition to the novels, other literary genres circulated in the newspaper, each of them with a utilitarian function for the reading community, that went from simple recreation through humor to the use of pornography, in order to build a political and/or social critique, as we can see in relation to the criticism present in the newspaper about the persecution of gambling.
NUMBERS RACKET AND MORE RACKETS This is worse than Lerna's hydra, and there is no more Hercules to exterminate the new monster that has taken over all of Brazil, and has become the nightmare of our police, who try to slam the numbers racket, but are slamming blindly. Those who dare to even mention the numbers racket near any police officer run a great risk. The authorities have taken matters into their own hands to unceasingly squash the racket, and terror is already invading the spirits of the peaceful inhabitants of this racked city. Because of the numbers racketsome unfortunate rake, due to a simple complaint, was dragged off to a police station, where it was found that the only racket he played was a broken tennis racket. (The Grin, Rio de Janeiro, 26/05/1911, n.

3, Anno I, p. 3) 16
Although games of chance are very present in daily life during the Belle Époque, both gamblers and card sellers 17 were persecuted, but the Brazilian elite had the right to have fun with other games, and encourage the creation of leisure spaces reserved for betting: "Even the most 16 TN: The numbers racket in Brazil involved the buying and selling of bingo-like cards with the pictures of animals on them, which then would be chosen and the spoils given to those who had picked the winning animals of that weekthus, the name of the game, Jogo do Bicho, or animal game. We have translated it as the Numbers Racket in the previous section and preserved the word play of the Brazilian journalist with the word 'racket', and variants, rack, rake. Translated from Portuguese: BICHO E MAIS BICHO Isso está pior do que a hidra de Lerna, e não ha mais Hercules para exterminar o novo monstro que se apoderou do Brasil inteiro, e tornou-se o pesadelo da nossa polícia, que está dando pancada de matar bicho, porém é pancada de cego. Corre grande perigo quem se atrever a falar em bicho perto de qualquer agente policial. As autoridades têm feitos coisas próprias de quem não cessa de matar o bicho, e o terror já vai invadindo o espirito dos pacatos habitantes dessa cidade bichada. Por causa do bicho um pobre homem, por uma simples denuncia, foi arrastado até uma delegacia, onde se verificou que o bicho que ele tinha era de pé. (O Riso, Rio de Janeiro, 26/05/1911, n. 3, Anno I, p. 3) 17 TN: See footnote 17. widespread form of popular game, the numbers racket, is prohibited and persecuted, although the sociability of elegant elites actually developed around the casinos, and the Jockey Club." 18 (SEVCENKO, 2003, p. 47).
In the criticisms of the newspaper, it is clear that persecution only happens against the "common man". As we can see in the previous quote, taken from the newspaper 19 , the characters who suffered from the violent action of the police were frome a lower social class, such as: "the poor man with a broken racket", "invasion of a tavern with animals in its cheeses", "houses with moths and termites" etc. Thus, we see that the federal government was more concerned with selecting games for its target audience than with inventing a society free of corrupting craftsmen through games and offenders: The fact that the Republic favoured the big game of the stock market and persecuted racketeers and the small game of the numbers racket suggests a different reception of the new regime on the part of what could be called the proletariatizing of capital. 20 (CARVALHO, 1987, p. 29) This harassment of gamblors and common folk is the battle-cry for The Grin's frequent criticism of the government and the defenders of hermism.
As in other examples in the newspaper, the chronicle "Racket and more rackets" 21 is accompanied by a photograph of a nude female, having nudity and politics share the same space, and the same readers.
In order to better visualize the mix of pleasures, that is, the most diverse pornographic and/or political compositions present in the newspaper The Grin, we catalogued genres 22 in order to demonstrate the textual genres that were published in the newspaper's 80 issues. 18 Translated from Portuguese: "Mesmo a forma de jogo popular mais difundida, o jogo do bicho, é proibida e perseguida, muito embora a sociabilidade das elites elegantes se fizesse em torno dos cassinos e do Jockey Club.". 19 Because it is a long text, we show only an extract to exemplify the criticism that the newspaper The Grin (Anno I, n. 3, in 07/06/1911, p. 3) made to the carioca police. However, throughout the text, other examples of police persecution are cited. 20 Translated from Portuguese: "O fato de a República ter favorecido o grande jogo da bolsa e perseguido capoeiras e o pequeno jogo dos bicheiros sugere uma recepção diferente do novo regime por parte do que poderia ser chamado de proletariado da capital.". 21 TN: Literally Animal (Bicho) and Animals (bichos) -animal bingo lotto card game, which we have translated as 'racket', referring also to a common gambling practice of this era in poor communities -the numbers racket. 22 To read the complete picture of the genres present in the 19th century issues of the newspaper The Grin, we indicate the reading of Azevedo (2015). In this article, we will demonstrate only a few genres in order to represent the newspaper's heteroclite construction.

Genres
Discourse community

Communicative purpose Examples
Chronicle General readers To announce the facts of the week and the intention of the publication through humorous criticism.

Ballads
General readers To produce entertainment and recreation through humor and pornography.

General readers
To produce entertainment and recreation through humor and pornography.
"Motte, por Dr. Sinete (Theme by Dr. Sinete) In: The Grin. (25/01/1912, n. 36, p. 12) Table 2 aims to present some pornographic newspapers that circulated in Brazil during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dialoguing and/or influencing the composition and style of The Grin. 23 Tables 1 and 2 are free adaptations of the exhibition framework proposed by Cruz (2014). The list of pornographic newspapers shows that The Grin dialogued with the other pornographic newspapers of its time. It is necessary to analyze the common and distinct points between the newspapers that shared the same editorial market to understand the widespread pornographic discourse shared by printed material and novelists of the Brazilian Belle Époque 24 , as well as verifying the presence of the scathing criticism against the republican newspapers that supported the political system, or the president Hermes da Fonseca.
Another possibility of dialogue that we find among the newspapers is the praise lauded to The Morning Post in the articles of The Grin. The "exchange" of kindness was not rare, even if it was a critical and humorous newspaper, but the editors defended themselves in the opening issue, claiming that "Our concern, our program is all about aesthetics and good humor. With no 24 The Brazilian Belle Époque was shaped by an extra-art attempt to be the Paris of the tropics, especially in the federal capital, Rio de Janeiro, which imported everything from the mannerisms to "from butter to the volupias brought by the French cotes that so gracefully decorated the maisons closes, cabarets and fashion stores of Rua do Ouvidor" (IVO, 2012, p. 6). hate and no passion, the sole parti-pris is laughing at everything and at everyone." (The Grin, Rio de Janeiro, 26/05/1911, n. 1, Anno I, p. 1).
The idea of opening the other's mind belongs undoubtedly to the second category; but to open the heart of the lovelier sex, removing from there the secret of the feminine opinion on the bearded sex is without doubt akin to genius. And so, it reached the dazzling pinnacles of human ingenuity of the Morning Post [...] However, a notice from the contest organizer suggests that the newsroom has been coyly hiding in the basket of other papers that express positively impressive desires. The advice in the letters of reply, is that the ladies should completely disregard the physical qualities they prefer in their husbands. 25

Pornographic horizons: some final considerations
The development of research on pornography has long since been considered controversial in the academic field due to its nature, due to its objects (newspapers and books forgotten by the history of literature) and its content (explicit sex). We decided to observe pornography through the representation of its discourse, and its relationship with the socialpolitical environment in the newspaper, The Grin, which circulated during the Brazilian Belle Époque, given the understanding that "pornographic literature acts on the border of social 25 Translated from Portuguese: "A ideia de abrir a cabeça do próximo pertence indiscutivelmente á segunda categoria; mas a de abrir o coração do belo sexo tirando de lá o segredo da opinião feminina sobre o sexo barbado é sem duvida alguma genial. E assim alcançou os píncaros deslumbrantes do engenho humano o Correio da Manhã [...] Entretanto um aviso do organizador do concurso permite supor que a redação tem ocultado pudicamente na cesta de papeis outras que manifestam desejos positivamente impressionadores. Diz o aviso que nas cartas de respostas as senhoritas devem-se abstrair por completo das qualidades físicas preferidas nos maridos.". space" 26 (MAINGUENEAU, 2010, p. 23). We take into consideration that it is necessary to know pornographic material to realize the satirical purpose, and the appropriation of pornography as a literary category in order to guide, and attract the reading public to the political attacks over the president Hermes da Fonseca and his confreres. From this point of view, it is possible to surmise that, in satire, pornography is established as a constitutive element of the (in)direct attack on the republican regime, especially with regard to Hermes da Fonseca.
All the particularities observed in relation to pornography associated with the political criticism of the Belle Époque indicate that the researchers who intend to analyze cultural goods, such as newspapers, should anchor themselves on the time of circulation in order to avoid anachronistic and decontextualized analysis. Based on this practice we are able to perceive the political criticisms from the moment we turn to the social-political crises, especially that of the persecution of gambling, and its relationship with a newspaper that proposes to be humorous and pornographic.
Thus, pornography must be seen in the singularity of its production of meaning, for there is no homogeneity in its composition. On the contrary, it is replete with multiple meanings through the most distinct creative procedures of using sex in literature.
The processes of appropriation of pornography and procedures for using allegory to criticize the government, are directly linked to the need for establishing satire as a vehicle for attacking social-political issues. In this sense, satire is not presented as a literary genre, but as a mechanism of language that becomes a weapon against a political system through art. Thus, both literary genres and pornographic discourses hidden behind the texts are constructed in the name of attacking, and not just the reader's mere excitement.