This article has two main objectives. The first is to call researchers' attention to a subject that is very little studied in Brazil regarding the Republican canon in elementary schools: the presence of texts about death, contingency and sadness- what I call here "rhetoric of unhappiness." The second objective is to describe the rhetorical-discursive procedures used to support discussions of these themes through the analysis of a text from the Republican codex. In the conclusion of this paper this analysis allows for an outline of theoretical and methodological guidelines for studying the formative power of school textbooks.
school textbooks; elementary school; Olavo Bilac; reading