O Paraná Mental e uma mulher polivalente: trajetória e obra de Mariana Coelho no cenário intelectual paranaense (1857-1954)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to present and analyze the trajectory of Mariana Coelho, educator, feminist and Portuguese writer (1857-1954), naturalized Brazilian. We seek to reflect on how Mariana Coelho established herself in certain spaces of the society in which she lived, discussing the difficulties of female insertion in the world of letters and Mariana Coelho's strategies for actively participating in these fields and obtaining recognition in them, as well as her own perceptions about the cultural, artistic and literate development in the State and its contribution to these intellectuals' project of bringing to light a discourse of modernity and progress. This is possible through the analysis of her work O Paraná Mental, from 1908, in which she makes a critical survey of the intellectual scene in Paraná. We seek to recognize her as an important figure not only in the social environment, based on her sociability networks, but also as an important female intellectual figure. Thinking about its insertion in this sociocultural space, we use the theoretical concepts proposed by Sirinelli to understand what characterizes the “intellectual” being, engagement and sociability structures, as obstacles that could authorize or disauthorize a certain subject within the literate space, at the same time. obtain recognition or not, understanding Mariana Coelho as a cultural mediator/intellectual mediator, also using Bourdieu's theoretical concepts, such as field, habitus and social capital. As sources, clippings of articles from newspapers and magazines and their summaries are used, which make reference to the analyzed author, the work O Paraná Mental, from 1908, by Mariana Coelho, the work Crítica Paranaense ao Paraná Mental, by her brother Carlos Alberto Teixeira Coelho, as well as letters exchanged between Mariana Coelho and some of her intellectual colleagues. We also used in the analysis the dedications found in some editions of the book O Paraná Mental, from 1908, since this same book was reissued in 2002.