Mucho más que buena letra. Escritura, arte caligráfico y civilización en Montevideo durante el siglo XIX

Abstract

After the independence and along the XIX century, during the process of cultural change which the montevidean government tried to impose in Uruguay, writing and caligraphy were asigned a commitment which is analysed in this article. A modern country tried to be established through it. The european liberal and industrialized nations were taken as a model, overcoming the traditional way of life considered “barbarian”. Education and alphabetization were found to be a main tool by the civilizating project, which enabled the assimilation of the european culture as well as the local development of bureaucratic capitalist forms. If writing had a functional nature, caligraphy, extremely ornamented and derived from it was considered a symptom of a superior culture and refinement, and the works of well known expert penmen were used to show the level reached by the country in its route to civilization.