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This article aims to identify the existence of a laughter community in Portugal in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Based on research into the beginnings of humour in periodicals published in Portugal, a corpus consisting of newspapers published between 1797 and 1835 was analysed, from the first in which humour was used systematically as a resource (Almocreve de Petas) until the establishment of the Constitutional Monarchy. With the concept of laughter community in mind, evidence was sought that it was present in the period that covers the political, social and economic transition from the Ancien Régime to modern society, having as main players writers, editors, printers, readers and listeners, in a process of production, reception, circulation and appropriation of ideas and meanings. This process, which developed in the public sphere, also played a part in forming incipient public opinion. To detect evidence of this community, clichés, jocular expressions and comic stories conveyed by the periodicals were identified. Very often they were found to have kept the same meaning they had at the time, while some expressions have survived with slight changes, and others simply no longer make people laugh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article discusses the debates on the independence of Brazil in the Constituent Cortes of Lisbon in 1821-1822 and its treatment by the Portuguese press of the time and in the following years, analyzing a selection of periodicals both Absolutist and Liberal, and paying particular attention to the humorous periodicals. The departure of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil on the eve of the Peninsular War, the end of colonial monopoly with the opening of some of the Brazilian ports to international trade and the upgrade to "United Kingdom" status set the objective conditions for the independence of Brazil. The new situation was perceived in Portugal as a downgrade of the former colonial power to the status of 'colony of a colony' and became a decisive factor of the 1820 Liberal revolution. The Constituent Cortes tried to reverse the irreversible process of Brazil's emancipation and eventually helped create the subjective conditions for independence both by political clumsiness in handling the "Brazil affairs" and by echoes of that strategy in the press aimed at conquering public opinion with recourse to humor, especially sarcasm, and even downright abuse, before and after the proclamation and the recognition of the new empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explore the impact of humorous processes on the emergence of modern Portugal. The research also looks into the role of humor in the building of public opinion, and intends to discern the place of humor in the development of printed communication in Portugal during the transition from Absolutism to the Liberal state and to grasp the social and political contradictions of humor in that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]