Primary education and free labor at the time of the king

Abstract

Through the review of the feuilleton "Memórias de um sargento de milícias (1852-1854), by Manuel Antonio de Almeida, and a dialogue established with the celebrated essay "Dialectic of Malandroism" (1970), by Antonio Candido, this article aims to analyze and interpret the situation of both the school and the crafts ironically represented in the feuilleton. Taking irony as a moral and defensive genre, the peculiar criticism towards education and labor at the king's time is perceived as built within a moralizing perspective, rather than in the "guiltless world" logic, characteristic of the dialectic of malandroism.

Keywords:
"Dialectic of malandroism"; primary school; free labor; nineteenth-century literature