HISTÓRIA DO BRASIL EM CORDEL
São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo,
1998, 283 pp.
Professor
Curran’s latest book takes a different tack.
Its thesis is that the news stories from Brazil’s literatura de
cordel in their entirety comprise a valid and important alternative source
for Brazilian history in the twentieth century – not that they are
history, but that they are invaluable for the learned historian as one of many
sources to write history. The idea is
based on Pedro Calmon’s seminal História do Brasil na Poesia do Povo
(1929) and a reading of E. Bradford Burns’ and Thomas Skidmore’s classics on
Brazilian history. The book was
favorably reviewed in Veja and literary supplements in São Paulo and
Brasília.
Each chapter of the book represents a phase of Brazilian history.
It starts with the Old Republic and then continues with
the revolutionary 1920s, the Vargas epoch, the democratic interim of
1954-1964, the military period from 1964 to 1985, and the return to chaotic
normalcy in the present. Each
chapter begins with an introduction summarizing “the official story” and is
followed by cordel’s version of the same with excerpts from texts and
Curran’s commentary. The poetry
of cordel is seen in effect as “popular history” for its public.
Highlights are many: the War of Canudos of 1896-1897 (the same reported
by Euclides da Cunha in his Rebellion in the Backlands), the saga of
northeastern banditry with Antônio Silvino , Lampião and Maria Bonita, Getúlio
Vargas’ national odyssey from the “New State” to workers’ democracy,
Juscelino Kubitshek’s utopic Brasília, Jânio Quadros’ eccentric
experiments and failures, Jango Goulart’s attempt at social reforms, the
Generals who protected freedom by squelching it, Tancredo Neves as messianic
savior, José Sarney’s deputizing of the masses, Collor de Mello’s debacle,
and Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s real.
The book is richly illustrated with covers of important booklets from cordel,
from the photo-clichê style to the folk woodcut.
In addition, there is a “Gallery of Poets of Cordel,” color
slides reproduced from Professor Curran’s collection covering over thirty
years of cordel. Footnotes
and a list of over three hundred titles of poems consulted complete the
offering.