A defesa da honra no Império do Brasil: os duelos na corte pelas páginas do Jornal do Commercio e Gazeta de Notícias (1870-1889)

Abstract

Respect, pride, reputation. Such values, encompassed within an ideal of honor, were extremely prized and disputed within societies in the nineteenth century. Taking this into consideration, the present research focuses on the defense of the honor through the custom of dueling in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the last two decades of the Second Reign. To this end, news extracted from two very relevant local newspapers of the period, the Jornal do Commercio and the Gazeta de Notícias, were used. Considering honor as a hierarchical sociocultural concept, our purpose was to understand how and why this practice was present in the fluminense society, observing the strategies employed for the maintenance and distinction through this ideal. In conjunction with that, due attention was given to the protagonists of the clashes of the Imperial Court, observing and problematizing the plurality of individuals who appeared in the pages of newspapers, as well as analyzing the position of the media vehicles about the value of honor and, especially, how they viewed the practice of dueling both within the community in which they were inserted and in the rest of the country.