Ink stains on paper: literature as a historical source

• Autor(a) principal: Montoito, Rafael
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Rios, Diogo Franco
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Zetetiké (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/zetetike/article/view/8654788
• topic: História da educação matemática; Fontes históricas; Literatura; Planolândia; History of mathematical education; Historical sources; Literature; Flatland.

This paper discusses the use of Literature as a research source in the History of Mathematics Education. At first, it promotes the use of this kind of source by discussing its potentialities and limitations, based on the theoretical framework that incorporates literature into historiography; following, it comments on fictional narrative and proposes sixteen different analysis categories which the researcher can rely on to question literary sources upondoing the historiographical research. Ultimately, by making use of two of these categories, an interpretationexercise from Edwin A. Abbott’s book “Flatland”, whose story involves characters such as geometrical beings, is presented. As a historical source, this work allows to know even better several conflicts in Victorian society, among which the way Abbott redesigns geometrical beings to represent the woman in British society at the time.