Cordel literature
Cordel literature (from the
History
Cordel literature forms one of the least altered continuations of the Western traditions of popular literature, such as
According to the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade it is one of the purest manifestations of the inventive spirit, the sense of humor and the critical capacity of Brazilians from the interior and of the humblest backgrounds.[2]
Form
Usually produced in black and white, in
The cordel literature found its zenith in the decades of 1920s and 1930s, with the popular legend created by the cangaceiros of Lampião, a band of outlaws and bandolier bandits who terrorized the region for almost 20 years. The War of Canudos, a military conflict in the state of Bahia, 1896–1897, has been also a frequent theme of cordel literature, due to its epic dimensions and importance for the history of the Northeast backlands.
Cordel literature can still be found in the Northeastern Brazilian states, most notably in Pernambuco, Paraíba and Ceará.
Authors
Some of the main authors from the past are Leandro Gomes de Barros (1865–1918)[3] and João Martins de Athayde (1880–1959).
Today some Cordel Literature authors as Marcelo Soares, Davi Teixeira, Meca Moreco and Altair Leal are keeping this popular expression alive. Those writers and other authors are helping to show the importance of popular art to Brazil and to the world .
There are a lot of not-well-known cordel authors in Brazil, although there are still chapbooks that tell widely known old tales, even reinvented, in a new context. See as an example a masterpiece of the past decades: A Chegada de Lampião no Inferno (The Arrival of Lampião in Hell) by José Pacheco, as well as today's A Chegada de Lula no Inferno (The Arrival of Lula in Hell); besides "classics," living folk poetry say to us much both about cordel and its strong roots in the everyday life of the people and its place in Brazilian culture as a whole.
See also
External links
Digital libraries dedicated to cordel literature
Source:[4]
- Collection Lira Popular (University of Chile)
- CBDRS - Catálogo y Biblioteca Digital de Relaciones de Sucesos (University of Coruña)
- Comedias Sueltas USA
- Corpus de Literatura Oral (University of Jaén)
- Untangling the cordel (University of Geneva)[5]
- Fons especials (University of Lleida)
- Fundation Joaquín Díaz
- Impresos Populares Iberoamericanos - IPI (UNAM)
- The Bibliothèque Virtuelle Cordel (University of Poitiers)
- Literatura de cordel y teatro en España (1675-1825)
- Literatura Oral y Tradiciones Populares (National library of Chile)
- Mapping Pliegos (Catholic University of Valencia, Library T. Navarro Tomás, CSIC, Cambridge University)
- Romanços - Imatgeria Popular (Calaix - Generalitat de Catalunya)
- Spanish Chapbooks (Cambridge University Digital Library - CUDL)
Association and other resources
- Literatura de Cordel: Web Resources (Rio de Janeiro Office, Library of Congress)
- Biblioteca Cordel On-Line (in Portuguese)
- Tesoros Trading Company reprint of New York Times article about Jose Borges Archived 2011-07-13 at the Wayback Machine
- Academia Brasileira de Literatura de Cordel (in Portuguese)
- Literatura de Cordel do Brasil (in Portuguese)
References
- ^ Marques, Pedro (January 2016). "The Papel Volante: A Marginalized Genre in Eighteenth-Century Portuguese Culture?". Portuguese Studies.
- ^ Slater, Candace (1984). A vida no barbante: a literatura de cordel no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. p. 2.
- ^ "A literatura de cordel e Leandro Gomes De Barros: Vida e obra". Recanto das Letras. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
- ISSN 1918-3666.
- ^ Carta, Constance; Leblanc, Elina (2021-05-10). "Le projet « Démêler le cordel » : une bibliothèque numérique pour l'étude de la littérature éphémère espagnole du XIX e siècle". Humanistica 2021 (in French).