The B-Side of History: the late 18th-century popular theater in the Histories of Portuguese Theater

Abstract

The B-Side of History: the late 18th-century popular theater in the Histories of Portuguese Theater – The objective of this article is to analyze the discourses of four Histories of Portuguese Theater (HPT) about the late 18th century. After discussing and delimiting the aesthetic aspects that circulate in Portugal in the period and the problems related to popular theater in the corpus, we established a quantitative analysis of the eighteenth-century theatrical varieties in each of the HPTs. Such quantitative examination leverages the qualitative analysis undertaken in the central part of the article, which aims to understand the aesthetic-ideological position of the discourse project of each author. Finally, we concluded that the HPTs are characterized by a view that should be reviewed considering the contemporary thought about the period.