As Conferências Populares da Glória e a difusão da ciência: The Gloria Popular Conferences and the diffusion of science

Abstract

During the 1870s were realized, at Rio de Janeiro, the Gloria Popular Conferences (Conferências Populares da Glória) that had the purpose of publicizing science, arts and literature. The public, composed by the literate stratum from the Rio de Janeiro society, welcomed the Conferences, which became a consolidated space of sociability at the Court. The repercussion in the press was important both to legitimate such space, and also to reverberate the discussions that took place, contributing for the dissemination and crystallization of the presented ideas. In this paper I discuss and analyze the conception, operation and consolidation of the Conferences as space of sociability, and its political power, as a privileged public space for the formation of public opinion.