ENTRE OS RITMOS DAS MEMÓRIAS, OS DIZERES RIMAM COM MULHERES: O VERSEJAR (AUTO)BIOGRÁFICO EM CORDÉIS CONTEMPORÂNEOS

Abstract

This thesis reflects on the tracings of Brazilian cordel literature, seeking to understand the gaps imposed by the masculine tradition through mechanisms of repetition and of paradigm continuity, approaching the silencing of female voices throughout official historiography and its repercussions in contemporary times, emphasizing the production of female memories in the (auto)biographical diction of contemporary cordel writers. The objective, in general, is to establish an analysis of contemporary female cordels to understand how cordelistas (self) represent and (auto) biograph the relationship of women with literary work. For that, the research goes through the memory traces in cordels by Jarid Arraes and Obra Coletiva 82 anos de publicações femininas na literatura de cordel (Colective work 82 years of female publication in cordel literature), organized by Graciele Castro, which presents the trajectories of 21 contemporary cordelists. As a theoretical-methodological contribution, this thesis adopts a qualitative approach based on a bibliographical and exploratory research based on studies on popular literature, considering the perspectives of female authorship and its intertwining with memory, reflecting on concepts such as biography, autobiography and self-rewriting. Such notions will be revisited in order to rethink cordel as a literary genre and as a cultural document by understanding the ways in which female cordelistas reconstruct their relations with the art of the voice and the written word in order to undertake new perspectives for historiography, broadening prevailing notions in the literary field and making plural subjectivities visible. We therefore concluded that the analysis of subjectivity marks that intertwine literature and women's lives, reconfiguring the world from their poetry, makes possible to rediscover the gaps in official historiography from female verse routes that presents a rewriting of themselves while rebuilding a new literary history, inscribing their thinking about cordel, reshaping their lives and envisioning new literary paths. Their voices perform new meanings and displace literary memories from their writings’ records.