Seminar
Cultures in dialogue: a comparative study between Brazilian Cordel and Portuguese Cordel

Maria Isaura Rodrigues Pinto, CES Post-Doctoral Student

May 11th, 2009, 17:00, CES Seminar Room

 
Presentation

This seminar aims to reflect upon the interactive processes between Cordel Literature from Brazil and Cordel Literature from Portugal. The exercise of analysis is based on compared literary studies that question ethnocentric paradigms both of source and influence. Based on this ethnocentric vision, the relation between the referred cultural productions has often been considered, even if in a very brief form. The theoretical perspective that appears, in this case, is held as restrictive, since, besides remitting to the idea of cultural dependency, translated in the notion of existence of a tutor text, ends up producing a silencing effect regarding the factors and circumstances of appropriation of elements of other cultures, mainly African and indigenous, of which the Brazilian Cordel also benefits from. Therefore, pursuing a change of focus, this study adopts a critical attitude that dislocates the binary logic of the Selfsame and the Other, which implies situating Brazilian and Portuguese Cordel Literature in a “borderline area”, understood as a “hybrid, babelic area where contacts comminute” and “the possibilities of identification and creation are immense”. Thus, in the steps of “founding reinterpretation”, the Other is seen not more as origin, but as a presence likely to render “selective and transforming appropriation” (SOUSA SANTOS, 1993).In this case, the basic conditions towards the research on the relations between the two Cordel Literatures are set, which will result in the assessment of the differentiated historical path of the Portuguese and Brazilian production of Cordel Literature, as well as the comparative analysis of identifying elements of the construction of texts. From this point on, the aim is discuss issues linked to “social forms of inexistence” (SOUSA SANTOS, 2002), to which Cordel Literature is subject to due to its specific nature, traditionally opposed to the nature of institutionalized literature.

 
Biographic note

Maria Isaura Rodrigues Pinto is a post-doctoral student at the Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, under supervision of Professor Graça Capinha. Holds a doctoral degree in Compared Literature at The Fluminese Federal University. Presently is Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities of the School of Teacher Training, Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). Her research conforms to the extent of compared cultural studies.

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