WHAT DO CORDEL AUTHORS SAY ABOUT THE DISCURSIVE GENRE THEY PRODUCE? AN ANALYSIS STEMMING FROM METALINGUISTIC REFLECTIONS ON COMPOSITIONAL ASPECTS OF THE CORDEL

ABSTRACT:

This article aims to analyze what cordel ¹ authors say about the compositional dimensions (rhyme and metrics) of the genre cordel. To this end, we rely, on the one hand, on theoretical discussions on discursive genres and cordel literature, and, on the other hand, on theoretical constructs in the field of metalinguistic consciousness and, in particular, on metatextual consciousness. The participants of this study were six poets, with different ages and years of schooling, with whom metalinguistic interviews were conducted, whose data were treated in the light of the thematic content analysis. The results revealed that the cordel authors were highly sensitive to the rules of rhyme and that, in the case of more experienced and less educated poets, the logic of oral and performance seemed to be more important than the strict obedience to predetermined rhyme patterns. Regarding the metrics, we realized that certain precepts were difficult to verbalize, even for those cordel authors with a higher level of education. In addition, some less educated poets predominantly resorted to the use of “singing” to make sure that the verses were metered. Thus, we concluded that, even when unable to verbalize compositional aspects of the cordel, the poets — including the poorly educated — engaged in a complex and sophisticated process of metalinguistic reflection.

KEYWORDS:
Cordel Literature; Literacy; Schooling; Verbalization

RESUMO:

Este artigo objetiva analisar os dizeres de cordelistas acerca das dimensões composicionais (rima e métrica) do gênero cordel. Para tanto, apoiamo-nos, por um lado, em discussões teóricas sobre gêneros discursivos e literatura de cordel e, por outro, em construtos teóricos do campo da consciência metalinguística e, em particular, da consciência metatextual. Foram selecionados como participantes desse estudo seis poetas, com idades e tempos de escolarização distintos, com os quais foram realizadas entrevistas metalinguísticas, cujos dados foram tratados à luz da análise temática de conteúdo. Os resultados revelaram que os cordelistas eram altamente sensíveis às regras de rima e que, no caso dos poetas mais experientes e menos escolarizados, as lógicas do oral e da performance pareciam ser mais importantes que uma obediência estrita a padrões rímicos pré-determinados. Com relação à métrica, percebemos que certos preceitos eram de difícil verbalização, mesmo para aqueles cordelistas com maior nível de escolaridade. Além disso, alguns poetas menos escolarizados recorriam predominantemente ao recurso do “canto” para se certificar de que os versos estavam metrificados. Desse modo, concluímos que, mesmo quando não eram capazes de verbalizar aspectos composicionais dos cordéis, os poetas – inclusive os pouco escolarizados – engajavam-se em um complexo e sofisticado processo de reflexão metalinguística.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Literatura de Cordel; Letramento; Escolarização; Verbalização

Introduction

This article presents part of the results of a broader research and aims to analyze the words of some cordel authors with different levels of schooling and ages, as well as generational status also differing on compositional dimensions (rhyme and metrics) of the cordel genre.² Such elements come mainly from the analysis of metalinguistic interviews (KARMILOFF-SMITH, 1995) carried out with six poets residing in the interior of the state of Pernambuco, Brazil.

However, what is the relevance of carrying out such an analysis in the field of education and language? One answer to this question is related to the relevance of better knowing how adults in non-school context operate linguistically, considering that, despite playing a fundamental role in differentiating the participation of subjects in written culture, schooling is not necessarily a decisive factor for individuals to go through certain literacy experiences.

In addition, we also believe that, by analyzing the words of the poets about compositional aspects of the cordel genre, this work may show the sophistication and complexity of the cognitive and metacognitive processes involved in the production of the leaflets. As Feldman (1995) explains, many authors who have traditionally focused on the relationship between orality and writing³ have tended to show that only writing would be able to allow subjects to engage in a metalinguistic process. However, as will become clear throughout the article, the practice of producing leaflets contributes to cordel authors in a way that, even those with low levels of schooling, consciously reflect on the language.

Cordel: a discourse genre

Each sphere of human activity formulates its relatively stable types of utterances, which are made up of recognizable conventions and expectations shared by its users, which we call discursive genre (BAKHTIN, 2011). On the one hand, these genres have characteristics that are common to a set of texts, but, on the other hand, these characteristics have been changing continuously. For this reason, Marcuschi (2008) explains that it is very difficult to classify the genres or to count them in their entirety, since they are dynamic and variable.

Regarding stability, three elements are constitutive of the genre, according to Bakhtin (2011): the thematic content, the compositional construction and the verbal style. None of these elements forms the utterance singly, that is, acting autonomously, since it is the integration between them that determines the genre. However, we consider that, in the field of research and teaching, it is possible and even necessary to focus on certain dimensions of the genre, but without losing sight of the indissolubility of its constituent elements.

The thematic content concerns the set of themes that is taken as the object of the discourse by a given genre and is defined by the author in relation to his/her interlocutors. We can mention, as an example, the cordel literature contests, which, although they have having a defined theme, allow each text to be constructed in order to echo a sui generis topic. As a result, Bakhtin (2011) explains that the thematic content includes aspects linked to the uniqueness of the speaker/writer and the regulatory parameters of the genre.

In the cordel genre, the thematic possibilities are so many that listing them would be an innocuous activity (ABREU, 1993). However, we recognize that, for decades, this variety has aroused the interest of many researchers, who, in an attempt to propose a more didactic approach to the cordel, have been willing to classify the topics covered in it according to the so-called “thematic cycles”. Such cycles, which were commonly used to refer to a set of leaflets that had a thematic content in common, had, however, very inaccurate classification criteria.

The compositional construction, in turn, refers to the mode of organization and structuring of the genre, as well as the thematic progression and the elements that constitute textuality (coherence and cohesion). This constitutive dimension of the genres corresponds to its enunciative finishing. In the case of cordel, we found, based on Ramos and Pinto (2015), some common characteristics of composition: preference for sextiles, stanzas of six verses with seven poetic syllables; predominance of narrative sequences; and presence of a “frame structure” (the first and last verses are written in the first person, while those that make up the interior of the narrative, are written in the third person).

The verbal style corresponds to the selection of lexical (vocabulary), phraseological (syntax) and grammatical resources performed by the writers and should be considered as an effect of the speaker's individuality (individual style) and collectivity (genre style). In the cordel, many texts of this genre present, for example, traces of oral speech, and verbs are often used in the first person of the plural, giving it an intimate style, which results from the proximity between the writer/narrator and the reader/listener (RAMOS; PINTO, 2015).

The rhyme, the metrics and the plot represent the constituent principles of the cordel genre. Although such aspects are mainly related to the compositional structure of this genre, we cannot ignore that they maintain intrinsic relations with the style and/or thematic content.⁴ We can say, anchoring ourselves in Bakhtin (2011, p.261-262), that this is because the compositional organization of the genre is inseparable from the theme and style, since these elements (the thematic content, the style and the compositional construction) “[…] are inextricably linked to the utterance as a whole and are also determined by the specificity of a given field of communication.”⁵

As for the rhymes, they should preferably be consonants, that is, they must present a correspondence between the phonemes from the stressed vowel to the end of the last word of the verse. We can say, therefore, that Juazeiro rhymes with pedreiro and café with Assaré, but not with mulher.⁶ The assonant rhymes, in turn, only coincide between the vowels of the stressed syllables, as in chapéu [hat] and menestrel [minstrel].

This last type of rhyme, which is regarded by several cordel authors as imperfect, was very common until the 1960s, when poets started to consider that consonant rhymes should be prioritized in production, probably due to the increase in schooling, the need to adapt to publication standards and an audience that had greater proximity to written culture.

The metrics, in turn, concerns the rhythm marked by the number of poetic syllables. When counting poetic syllables, which differ from grammatical syllables, syllables after the last stress are disregarded if the number of syllables is greater than seven; for example: ‘cor / del / tem / e / xi / gên / cias’.⁷ In this case, there are eight grammatical syllables, but seven poetic syllables. After the sextile, stanzas of six verses with seven syllables, the most popular modalities in the cordel literature are the setilhas or septilhas — stanzas of seven verses with seven poetic syllables.⁸ and the décimas (“tenths”), stanzas of ten verses of seven (tenth of seven feet) or ten (called martelo agalopado) poetic syllables.

Since cordel is a genre in which writing, oral and gestural are deeply interwoven, especially when reciting poems at fairs or at meetings destined for this purpose, as it was common until the 1950s, performance was certainly more important than strict obedience to rhyme patterns and metric standards that only make sense when the logics linked to writing becomes more relevant.⁹

The * plot is another principle that governs the cordel and corresponds to the thematic unity and the articulation of ideas, both from a logical and textual point of view. Therefore, it is not enough to build verses with appropriate rhymes and metrics, it is necessary for the text to have internal coherence. The absence of logical relations between the ideas underlying the text and the lack of a good outcome can make a text incoherent, making it difficult for the recipients to understand the situation of communicative interaction. Nevertheless, coherence is built on the interaction between the author, the text and the reader.

According to Abreu (1993), sometimes, poets, in an attempt to maintain clarity and coherence, elaborate, in the first stanzas of the cordel, a synthesis of the plot, in which they briefly describe the characters, highlight the main aspects and, in some cases, anticipate the outcome. This synopsis, for the author, facilitates the public's understanding and allows the poet to respect the principle of the plot. In the same direction, Galvão (2000), when analyzing eight leaflets published between the 1930s and 1940s, showed that all of them presented, in the first stanzas, the main elements of the narrative, while the later ones constituted the unfolding of the first ones.

Since in this article we will analyze the verbalizations of cordel authors about the compositional structure of the genre they produce, the cordel, we think it is necessary to consider the theoretical construct of metalinguistic awareness and, in particular, one of its dimensions: the metatextual awareness.

Metatextual awareness: an explicit and conscious reflection on text and genre

Metalinguistic awareness corresponds to a broad construct that involves various skills of reflection and conscious manipulation of certain strata of the language, such as phonological, morphological, syntactic, textual and pragmatic (GOMBERT, 1992). In this article, our interest focuses mainly on what the specialized literature has called “metatextual awareness”, one of the dimensions of metalinguistic awareness.

Studies on metatextual awareness are usually divided into two groups: in one of them, there are investigations related to the analysis of the microlinguistic aspects of the text, such as cohesion and punctuation; in the other, there are researches that deal more closely with the macrolinguistic aspects of the text (SPINILLO; SIMÕES, 2003). According to these authors, the studies included in this last group aim to examine the individual's ability to reflect on the general organization of the text and can be organized into two subcategories: 1) studies aimed at reflecting on the content of the text; and 2) studies that involve a reflection on the structure of the text, which, in general, refers to the notion of textual genres.

In general, it can be said that metatextual awareness is related to conscious reflection, control and verbal explanation of the linguistic and extralinguistic dimensions of the text (SPINILLO, 2009). However, as indicated by Spinillo and Simões (2003), verbal explanation is not a mandatory requirement for access to metatextual awareness in research situations, even though it constitutes an important resource for studies on the subject. In the same direction, Gombert (1992) points out that, although we can attribute, in a first analysis, the qualifier “conscious” to the subject's ability to verbally make explicit the determinants of his/her own behaviors, the non-verbal explicitness does not necessarily mean non-conscience.

Karmiloff-Smith (1994) makes an important contribution by proposing the analysis of levels of consciousness based on the theory of representational redescription. According to that author, dichotomies such as implicit/explicit, awareness/unawareness, automatic/controlled among others would not be enough for someone to understand the complexity of representational changes. For this reason, the author defends the existence of not only two, but multiple levels of representation.

According to the aforementioned author, learning occurs, at first, automatically and repetitively, because there is implicit information in mind, encoded in the form of procedures, which are capable of carrying out, from beginning to end, certain actions, without having access to its component parts consciously. Therefore, the subjects act automatically and mechanically, without having conscious control of what they do. The subjects’ mental representations become, over time, more flexible and manipulative, as the implicit information in the mind becomes more and more explicit, reaching an explicitly awareness and/or explicitly verbal awareness level.

Gombert (1992) considers that the emergence of metalinguistic skills, including the metatextual ones, does not occur automatically, as it demands a certain cognitive effort, which, as a rule, is not made spontaneously by people. According to the author, the development of metalinguistic awareness, therefore, would require a level of control and verbal explanation that would not be found in individuals with little or no education. In this sense, we could question whether this would also occur with experienced writers, even with little or practically no schooling, as is the case of many cordel authors.

Lahire (1998), when inscribing the reasons for the actors’ lack of awareness of their knowledge and practices in the functioning of the social world, also draws attention to the fact that individuals are more aware of the knowledge derived from explicit learning and tend to speak little about those built implicitly in interdependent relationships with others, in which what is “transmitted” is not exactly a “knowledge”, but a “work” or an “experience”.

In the results and discussion and in the final considerations, this debate will be resumed, problematizing this perspective. In the next section, we will detail the methodological procedures that were adopted to investigate the poets’ verbalizations about the cordel, considering two of its pillars: the rhyme and the metrics.

Methodology of the study

In order to meet the objective of the study, which consisted of analyzing the poets’ verbalizations about some compositional dimensions (rhyme and metric) of the cordel genre, we resorted to the metalinguistic interview (KARMILOFF-SMITH, 1995). This interview demanded, on the part of the interviewees, a higher level of reflection on aspects of the cordel genre that, most likely, were not analyzed in an explicitly conscious way during the production process. We emphasize that such interviews (or part of them) were carried out with the mediation of texts produced by their respective authors, who, in this case, were the poets participating in the study.

The data generated from this methodological procedure were treated based on content analysis (BARDIN, 1979), which was developed by themes (categorical thematic analysis) and involved the following steps: pre-analysis, material analysis (coding and categorization of information), treatment of results, inference and interpretation.

Six cordel authors participated in the study, selected mainly for their level of education and their age/the generation they belonged to Table 1 shows the profile of the cordel authors interviewed.

Table 1
Profile of the cordel authors interviewed

Information of the cordel authors
Name10	J. Borges	Paulo Pereira	Zé Guri	Val Tabosa	Diosman Avelino	Jailton Pereira
Age	80 years old	71 years old	66 years old	54 years old	38 years old	34 years old
City in which currently resides	Bezerros – Pernambuco	Caruaru – Pernambuco	Belo Jardim – Pernambuco	Caruaru – Pernambuco	Pesqueira – Pernambuco	Tacaimbó – Pernambuco
Current occupation	Cordel seller, but has acted, above all, as Xylographer	Retired businessman	Seller of cordels and other products	Weaver	Seller of cordels and decorative objects	Produces non-commercial cordels. He is currently unemployed
Educational level	One year incomplete (10 months)	Third grade of Elementary School	One year (incomplete)	High school concluded	High school concluded (Through Youth and Adult Education)	High school concluded
Parents’ educational level	Did not attend school (the father knew how to read and write)	Did not attend school	Did not attend school	The mother completed Teaching course at High School level and the father concluded Elementary School	Did not attend school	They studied for a year
Parents’ job	Farmers and muleteer	Farmers	Farmers	The father is a driver and the mother is not currently engaged in any paid activity	Farmers	Farmers

Source:

The authors interviewed were of different ages, but, even so, it was possible to bring them into two age/generational groups, despite recognizing the limits of this classification: one consisting of J. Borges, Paulo Pereira and Zé Guri, born between the 1930s and 1950s and who, at the time, were 81, 70 and 66 years old, respectively; and another composed by Val Tabosa, Diosman Avelino and Jailton Pereira, aged 54, 38 and 34, respectively, and born between the 1960s and 1980s.

As for educational level, we were also able to categorize them into two groups, which correspond to age/generational groups: poets with little education, that is, who did not finish Elementary School (J. Borges, Paulo Pereira and Zé Guri); and poets with higher education, corresponding to those with complete High School (Val Tabosa, Diosman Avelino and Jailton Pereira). In this article, we use the term “schooling” to refer to the educational process that took place at the school institution, although we recognize that the school was not (and still is not) the only agency that mediated the process of appropriating reading and writing (GALVÃO, 2001), and that literacy goes beyond learning to read and write and the school institution, referring to broader social processes linked to written culture.

The poets lived in different cities, except for Paulo Pereira and Val Tabosa, although these belonged to the micro region of Agreste Pernambucano. In addition, all were born in rural areas and later moved to urban centers. Regarding their parents’ job and education, most of them worked as farmers and had little (or no) education. Only one of the poets, José Genival Tabosa (Val Tabosa), was the son of parents with a higher level of education and who had another occupation.

What did the cordel authors say about compositional aspects of the cordel genre?

There are socio-historically constituted principles and specific rules that guide the writing of texts of the cordel genre. According to all cordel authors we interviewed, it is precisely the obedience to the rules of metric, rhyme and plot that define a “good” cordel. This fact was also present in the ethnographic interviews conducted by Resende (2010), between 2002 and 2004, with several cordel authors and editors. We also agree with Resende's results in relation to the idea that the creation of fixed patterns for strophic, rhyme and metric structures helps in the composition of the cordels and allows the verses to be memorized more easily, both by readers/listeners and by the poets themselves. Thus, Abreu (2006a) observes that these rules, instead of constituting restrictions, are necessary for the creation of verses.

In the following interview extract, the poet Val Tabosa explains what is necessary for a text to be considered a good cordel:

Rhyme, metrics and plot. Rhymes are the endings of words. There are phonetic rhymes and consonant rhymes. […]. There is also the plot. The plot is the plot, it is the story. Sometimes, you can make several rhymes, but without a pleasant content. What will happen in the next verse, right? So, this is the plot. Another important thing about cordel is metrification. In metrification, the syllables of each verse are important. The verse is the line. A line. So, we build the verse in seven syllables and ten syllables. Sometimes there is one slip, but the poetic syllable is considered. It must be the tonic or the poetic syllable […].¹¹ (Val Tabosa, personal communication).

We recognize, based on Ferreira and Spinillo (2003), that reflecting on the structure of the text is a complex activity, as it demands deliberate action regarding its form and organization, given that when we talk or write a text, we do not always reflect, deliberately, about the structure or function of the language we use. In these usage situations, little importance tends to be attributed to the internal structure of the text or the way it is organized.

Therefore, we will discuss, in the next subsections, about the sayings of the cordel authors in relation to the poetic structure of the cordel, contemplating, more specifically, the rhyme and the metric. The plot, although it constitutes one of the compositional principles of this genre, was not included in this work for reasons already expressed previously.

The rhymes

Rhyme is one of the dimensions of phonological awareness, which consists of a metalinguistic ability related to conscious reflection on the sound properties of words, dissociating them from their meaning, and the segmentation of words into sounds (SOARES, 2016). To this author, the rhyme has, in Portuguese, a double meaning: in the first, of restricted use, it is understood as an intrasyllabic unit that adds to the onset¹² in the constitution of the syllable (rhyme of the syllable); in the second, the rhyme designates the similarity between the final sounds of words (rhyme of words), commonly from the vowel or tonic diphthongs, but also between final phonemes of oxytone words and between one or two final syllables of the words.

All cordel authors we interviewed pointed out the rhyme as one of the determining elements to qualify a text as being of the cordel genre: “If there is no rhyme, I myself would not consider it a cordel”¹³ (J. Borges, personal information); “Every cordel must have a rhyme, because it is a characteristic of the cordel”¹⁴ (Val Tabosa, personal information); “If you don't have it, it's not cordel. Someone can come up and say, the guy who does it, that it is cordel, but it is not. Cordel has to be popular poetry. Popular poetry, if it doesn't have a rhyme, it's not poetry”¹⁵ (Jailton Pereira, personal information).

In this sense, the justifications given by them about the need for rhymes in the cordels were different, and can be grouped into three categories: 1) the text that does not contain a rhyme is considered prose (a literary genre that would not be subject to the rhyme) (J. Borges, Val Tabosa and Jailton Pereira); 2) the Brazilian cordel literature presents rhyme, unlike the Portuguese, which would not follow rhythmic and metric patterns and, for this reason, would not be cordel in the strict sense¹⁶ (Diosman Avelino); 3) the text that does not have a rhyme would not be cordel, but no justification is explained for that (Zé Guri and Paulo Pereira). By way of example, the following are some of the testimonies:

If there is no rhyme, I myself would not consider it a cordel. I consider the format only, the format that is cordel, but the writing I consider to be a prose booklet, written in prose.¹⁷ (J. Borges, personal communication).

They say the cordel came from Portugal, I don't know about that … But I tell you: to me, cordel was born in Brazil. I think cordel is 100% Brazilian. I haven't researched yet, I haven't read any literature from there, what a cordel from another country would be, but they also say it was without metric, it was without rhyme. So, to me, if it was without rhyme it was not cordel. To me cordel is 100% Brazilian. Cordel has to be national, especially from the Northeast.¹⁸ (Diosman Avelino, personal communication).

If it doesn't have a rhyme it's not cordel. There has to be a rhyme, metrics. Look, it's rhyme, metrics and plot. Cordel has all of it. Now, you're going to make a cordel just like that, but it's not right. You can't put a word that doesn't rhyme well. You have to rhyme. If it doesn't rhyme in writing, it's wrong.¹⁹ (Paulo Pereira, personal information).

The interviewees’ statements allowed us to perceive two trends regarding knowledge about the rhyme: those who were able to verbally explain reasons for the cordel to have rhyme (categories 1 and 2), and those who did not, although they also consider the rhyme as a mandatory element in the structure of this genre (category 3). It is also important to highlight that some experiences were common to the last group of poets: Zé Guri and Paulo Pereira worked, when young, as cordel leaflet sellers, presented very similar age profiles (67 and 71 years old) and, among the interviewees, were those who had less time as cordel producers. J. Borges, Val Tabosa and Jailton Pereira, although belonging to different generations, constituted the group of cordel authors with the longest time as writers of the genre.

Despite that, the six interviewees managed to identify rhymes present in leaflets of their own authorship and pointed out the existence of two types of rhymes commonly used in texts of the cordel genre: consonant rhymes (total correspondence of sounds and spelling) and assonant or phonetic (sound coincidence from tonic vowel or diphthong to the last phoneme, but not graphical). We extracted some statements from the interviews that illustrate that:

Rhymes are the endings of words. There are phonetic rhymes and consonant rhymes. Consonant rhymes are rhymes that end with the same letters. And phonetics … For example, I say MEL [honey] and I say CÉU [sky], there is rhyme, but the spelling is different. If I say CORAÇÃO [heart] and I say AÇÃO [action], the rhymes are the same, but the spelling is also the same. So, the more the rhymes are consonants the better, but what matters is the rhyme. Phonetics are rhymes in which the spelling is different, but the sound is the same, as I gave the example (CÉU e MEL). It is written differently, but it rhymes the same. This is possible within poetry.²⁰ (Val Tabosa, personal information)

So, it means that there were three rhyming words here [points to the cordel]. Here it is CANTORIA [singing] to rhyme with VENTANIA [gale]. GURI [boy], CARIRI [an indigenous tribe] and ALI [there] rhyme. CANTORIA rhymes with VENTANIA. Here I put CORAGEM [courage], VIAGEM [trip] and LAJE [slab]. This one is six. It is a sextilha [six verses]. ALGUÉM [someone] rhymes with BEM [well]. This part here [the first line] is fixed. The second rhymes with the fourth and the sixth. To really work it has to be the same writing, because when it's not the same it doesn't rhyme. The old poet said: “You, to be a singer, have to take the best leaflet around and look at the verses, if they rhyme or not, you know?”. There, this one is one of the best (Donzela Teodora, by Leandro Gomes de Barros). I think here is tropeçar or tropeço [stumbling or stumble]. It is “torpeza” [indecency]. And here it is “acesa” [alight] and here it is “surpresa” [surprise]. They are all like that. That's why, sometimes, a “Z” like in “JOSÉ”; there are people who put a “Z” and others who put an “S”, isn't there? It is an “S” with a “Z” sound. There are lyrics that fit. The “Z” sometimes matches the “S”. SUPRESA, ACESA and TORPEZA I rhyme. If it's not ok, then I don't know. There are many things like that, like JESUS with CRUZ [cross]. JESUS I rhyme with CRUZ. Every poet rhymes with CRUZ, but it seems that the letter is different. Or not? But it rhymes. Because just the sound doesn't work, like this: CANTOU [sang] and CANTOR [singer], but JESUS with CRUZ rhymes. ACESA with BELEZA [beauty] or MASSA [pastry] with PRAÇA [square] or with CACHAÇA [sugarcane liquor]. I rhyme with everything. If it's not rhymed, then there are few people wrong. Because in CACHAÇA, PRAÇA, MASSA, FAÇA [do it], TAÇA [goblet], the letter changes but it's rhymed. And if it is to rhyme the way the letters are, few guys will be right.²¹ (Zé Guri, personal information).

Thus, all poets seemed to recognize, implicitly or explicitly, that consonant rhymes, being more difficult to use, would be considered “perfect” (idealized), but few used this type of rhyme exclusively, because, in fact, they gave fewer options of poetic creation to the cordel authors and, certainly, were not determinant for a good performance. Zé Guri reported, in the statement above, the ignorance that often occurred in relation to the correct spelling of words, such as the use of S and Z (spelling), due to the fact that the same sound can be represented by more than a letter, as well as the reverse (the same letter can represent more than one sound).

To Jailton Pereira, in cordel literature contests — certainly more and more marked by the logics of written culture — for example, only consonant rhymes should be used. However, according to him, when this is not the case, the rule can be flexible, even though he made a point of saying that he values the “true rhyme” when he is writing at ease.

Rhyme must always obey what I have already said: the rhyme consonant, which is considered the real rhyme and not that rhyme in disguise (called phonetic or sounding), like CANTAR [sing] and CEARÁ [one of the Brazilian states], like VIOLA [10-string guitar] and HORA [hour]. That kind of rhyme doesn't work. If the cordel has a sounding rhyme, it already starts losing a point there, in the case of the contest. For you to write a work that is not being analyzed is different. Although even when I'm at ease, I also try to appreciate what the cordel has to have to be good, which was your question to me. Then, I always value rhyme, metrics and plot.²² (Jailton Pereira, personal information).

According to J. Borges, rhymes can still be classified in three ways: positive rhymes (the final syllables of the verses have identical sounds and spelling); comparative rhymes (composed of final syllables in which sounds are similar, but distinguished in spelling) and negative rhymes (the spelling and sounds that the final syllables present are different). Although in the cordel these three forms of rhyme may exist, for J. Borges “a good cordel has only positive rhymes”. When considering the differentiation between the rhymes, the poet made the following statement:

To be a good cordel you must have the rhymes all positive […]. Now, if there is no rhyme, I wouldn't consider it cordel myself. I consider the format only, the format that is cordel, but the writing I consider it to be a prose booklet, written in prose. The positive rhyme is this: PREGUIÇA [laziness], ATIÇA [incite] and COBIÇA [greediness]. Those are positive. And it's like I told you: that pronunciation of RÉU [defendant] and CORDEL, that is comparative. The negative rhyme is when you write PENSAMENTO [thought] e TEMPO [time]. This is a negative rhyme, it doesn't rhyme at all.²³ (J. Borges, personal information).

As we pointed out, consonant or positive rhymes are considered, by several poets and by the specialized public (which, in the last decades, also means more schooled), as “perfect”. Although this rule is socially legitimized by cordel authors, many others are often circumvented by them during the cordel writing process, either because the idealized rhyme model is not always possible to achieve, or because, as we have already stated, it may not be the most important in certain enunciation contexts. However, the poet would need to be aware of certain distinctions, such as, for example, “mulhé” [with “café” [coffee] or “amô” with “dor” [pain],²⁴ because, in these cases, an infraction would have been committed.

In this sense, Santos (2009) observes that there are some confusions between the matuto poem²⁵ and the cordel that still need to be undone: in the cordel, the use of spellings that reproduce the colloquial language (mulhé and amô, for example) would not be allowed, for example as it is a necessarily written and printed genre. Thus, according to that author, these “rhymes” would be closer to matuto poetry — often oral — than, properly speaking, to cordel literature.

Despite the consensus among cordel authors regarding the use of rhyme rules, their domain was not accessible to all, since it depended, to a great extent, on the learning of the written language. On this issue, Zé Guri said:

I was going to sing and would rhyme CANTAR [sing] with GUARANÁ [a fruit found in the North of Brazil] and you can't do that. I used to rhyme BELO JARDIM [beautiful garden] and used CARIM²⁶ but it doesn't work. I used DORMIR [sleep], and I rhymed it with GURI [boy] At that time, I didn't know how to read almost anything. Now I read a lot. I am not schooled, but I read a lot and at that time I wouldn't read much. At that time, I worked on the farm, I just kept working. Then, the cordel singer said: “Do you know how to read?”. I said, “I know”. Then, he asked me to spell GURI and DORMIR and I spelled it. He said: “For you to rhyme GURI you have to look for the letters that end with R and I and an acute”. There, poetry has a lot to do with reading. It can be cordel, it can be repente,²⁷ it can be embolada,²⁸ the more the poet can read, the more he develops. Being illiterate, he sings a lot of wrong things and doesn't speak well. I don't even know how to say anything because I didn't go to school. I can read, but I never had a class with a teacher saying “that word is not like that, it is like this” so that I can learn. I grew up talking the way my dad and mom did, the matuto language and that was it. No one has ever said, “It's not like this, it's like that”. If I only had studied like my boy did, he is already a teacher. He doesn't speak the wrong Portuguese. It is always right, really. Everyone who studied speaks right, because they learned to speak right, but I did not. I learned to read by myself. I know how to read, but to myself.²⁹ (Zé Guri, personal information).

Zé Guri's testimony clearly shows that the logics linked to writing have increasingly become determinant in the production process of the cordel. The change in the profile of the poets and the reader/listener audience itself, along with the expansion of schooling, observed in recent decades, certainly act as “voices” in his speech. Cordel writers, who often used school mediators to dictate their poems and print them, are now considered by them, as illiterate. Galvão e Di Pierro (2012) point out that illiteracy, in most cases, is not understood by adults who do not know how to read and write as a result of social exclusion processes or as a violation of rights, but as individual experiences of failure.

Historically, and in different social spheres, the word ‘illiterate’ was charged with a negative meaning (person who does not know how to speak and has no knowledge; person with no education; incapable, among other adjectives) which was sometimes incorporated and legitimized by the illiterate him/herself. When we observed Zé Guri's statement, we realized that not mastering writing skills became an evident mark of this stigma. We cannot deny that, through the cordel, many poets — such as Zé Guri — and publishers started reading and writing practices, taking it as a first printing reference.

The poets interviewed also made distinctions regarding the value of the rhymes, since, for them, there were easy and other more difficult rhymes, which gave few possibilities for creation and demanded greater creativity from the cordel poets:

In this case, what I usually notice is to try to leave the metrics more or less ready, because it happens that still there isn't that much metrics. I avoid repeating rhymes, words, for example, CRUEL, NOEL [may refer to different things, such as Papai Noel – Santa Claus] and PAPEL [paper]. I avoid this repetition of rhymes. I don't think it's very nice for people to repeat the same word over and over in the same story … Then, it goes like (bla-bla-bla-cruel). Then, whatever cruel … subject is missing. I avoid this, I always see it happen and it passes unnoticed. I recently wrote a poem and put a line that said that ‘o trovão grita sorrindo e a criançada grita sorrindo’ [the thunder screams smiling, and the children scream smiling]. Then, I changed it. I wrote that the kids’ scream smiling and said that the thunder screams tinkling … Then, I avoid this issue of repetition of rhyming words a little. But which word was never repeated, right?³⁰ (Diosman Avelino, personal information).

These lexical choices made by the interviewees, when composing the cordels, acquired a notable importance, not only regarding the rhyme, but also for maintaining the meaning of the text. In this perspective, the poets in a higher age range (Val Tabosa, Diosman Avelino and Jailton Pereira) said, often, they resort to dictionaries and/or the internet to check the spelling of words and to search for synonyms.

We look up the dictionary, or something, to see if there was a lot of nonsense. I use more dictionary in meanings, looking for synonyms. Sometimes, you go in a certain rhyme and want to say something, then you look for a word with the meaning you wanted to say, but it doesn't give the rhyme, that's where you look for a synonymous word. Then, I use the dictionary for that. […]. Sometimes a word loses the meaning of the stanza. It is in this sense as well.³¹ (Jailton Pereira, personal information).

In addition, cordel writers such as Val Tabosa and Jailton Pereira wrote the verses in a “deixa” [cue], that is, they rhymed the first verse of the stanza with the last verse of the previous stanza, which is a resource also used in the repente (see footnote 14). This strategy, as the aforementioned poets pointed out, used to assist them in memorizing the verses.

There are many poets who don't write in “DEIXA” and I, yes, write in “DEIXA”. In the “DEIXA”, the guy ends a verse and starts another one rhyming with the last word of the previous sentence. I think this is my thing. I thought it was cool to memorize the poem. I memorize easier than those that are not with “DEIXA”. When I finish a verse, I am already remembering the first sentence of the other verse. Remembering the first, automatically, you remember the rest. The work is the first line.³² (Jailton Pereira, personal information).

The rhymes can also be classified according to their position in the stanzas: paired or parallel rhymes, as the name suggests, are combined alternately, following the AABB scheme; alternating or crossed rhymes correspond to the sequence ABAB; interpolated or opposite rhymes show the ABBA scheme; and the white verses are those that do not have rhymes. In his testimony, Diosman Avelino explains this aspect:

The sextilha [six verses], you will see here, the words that rhyme are usually even numbers, two, four and six. One, three and five do not rhyme. But I have a poem that rhymes them all. But it is rare. I did this mainly because I still didn't … I was still learning. For example, I saw a poem entitled “Sou Poeta Nordestino” [I'm a Northeastern Poet], several of them rhyme.

Sou poeta nordestino

E não sou por opção

No tempo de menino

Já fazia um refrão

Isso é obra do divino

E não tem explicação ³³

It is rhyming everything here: the first with the third and the fifth and the evens with the evens. It's more work. You have to have more words to rhyme, and here you don't.³⁴ (Diosman Avelino, personal information).

On the one hand, the research data we developed allow us to state that the time and intensity of the experiences that the poets had with cordel influenced their phonological skills related to the rhyme. On the other hand, we also call attention to the fact that having a certain degree of “awareness” does not necessarily mean that the individual is able to intentionally direct his/her attention to the sounds of words and verbalize the reasons for what he/she observes.

In the wake of these observations, we understand, based on Roazzi et al. (1994), that repente writers - and, in this case, cordel writers - are highly sensitive to rhyme, which does not mean that this necessarily extends to other phonological skills. In the investigation, where we sought to analyze the phonological awareness skills between repente writers and non-repente writers, tasks were performed with 41 people (22 repente writers and 19 non-repente writers) capable of reading and writing and of low socioeconomic level.

These tasks were divided into three categories: control tasks (tests of intelligence and verbal memory), reading tasks (reading and writing words) and tasks of phonological awareness (task of inversion of phonemes, task of inversion of syllables, task of similarity and detection of rhyme and alliteration, task of the “P” language³⁵ and task of producing alliteration).

It was found, through these various phonological awareness activities, that there were significant differences between the two groups only in the activity of phoneme inversion, and that the repente writers were better at the phonemic segmentation task than the non-repente writers. One of the explanations given by the authors was that the repente production demands from the poets an ability to analyze the end (rhyme) and global (metrics) of the word, which would lead them to have a more improved phonological awareness. The study also revealed, among other aspects, the importance of reading in the detection of rhymes by the group of non-repente writers, which did not happen among the repente writers, probably because they have a lot of practice in dealing with rhymes, due to their own profession, solving, this way, more easily this kind of task.

Metrics

As the poets themselves used to declare, metrics consists of the measure of the verse, that is, the counting of the sounds of each verse (poetic line). In other words, metrics concerns the rhythm marked by the number of poetic syllables. In general, metrics corresponded, for the cordel writers, primarily to the quantity of poetic syllables of the verses. However, there were still interviewees who referred to the poetic modalities (position of the rhymes) and the identical number of verses in the stanzas. In a way, these aspects do not act dichotomously, but in an integral relationship. Authors such as Gonçalves (2016) point out that cordel metrification is generally produced by the “hearing” and that few poets count poetic syllables. Once again, we observed that this type of practice is explained by the fact that the cordel is a genre written with a deep relationship with orality and with the conditions of enunciation - performance. During the interview, Val Tabosa told us, with the intention of accounting for the poetic syllables of a verse, the following:

This one is in ten. It's in ten. POR-QUE-BA-TI-ZAR-CRI-AN-ÇA? [why baptize a child] [the poet counts by tapping his fingers on the table]. It is in ten verses and seven syllables. The latter (ÇA) is out, but it has the poetic syllable. Then, it is considered eight, nine. Because it is difficult to leave with seven […]. For example, speaking of this cordel here “Moto Clube Águias do Agreste” [Agreste Eagle Motorcycle Club]. I'm going to write a poem for Águia do Agreste, I won't type it right away, I do it first on paper. I do it on paper. If it doesn't work, I'll throw it away and get another one. Then, when it is more or less ready I will type it, because typing is also interesting for metrification. So, when I type it, I type it slowly. Then I do the metrification and this metrification I do it counting on the fingers so that it stays within what is regulated, so that we don't miss the pattern. If you are going to recite a poem to a poet, he immediately sees the defects or the successes.³⁶ (Val Tabosa, personal information).

We also observed, through this report of Val Tabosa, that, in the cordel, the poetic syllables differ from the grammatical syllables, mainly by the following precepts: 1) the poetic syllables are counted until the last stressed syllable of the verse, and the posterior syllables are not accounted for; 2) diphthongs have only the value of a single poetic syllable; and 3) two or more unstressed and, sometimes stressed, vowels can be connected between one word and another, forming a single poetic syllable. In his testimony, one of the poets explains this issue:

Metrics is the size of each line in syllables, which are not grammatical syllables, but poetic syllables. It's a little bit different. You start counting when it comes to the stressed syllable, like this: E -NÃO-VE-JO- QUEM-CON-TES-TE [And I don't see who is against]. The initial “E” [and] is one, then the “NÃO” [no] counts integrally, the “VE”, the “JO” [‘vejo’ – I see] and the “QUEM” [who] count separately, and in “conTESte” [is against], the “TES” is the strongest one. Then it stops. Then, it's seven because the last one doesn't count. Generally, all must be with seven to obey this rule. These are all seven, but sometimes a few do not come out with seven. This does not harm the metrics either because of the way poetry is made. That's why poetry is complicated. This goes naturally. This one is the same thing, what will differentiate is the strongest syllable at the end of the word. When it comes to the strongest syllable of the last word, it stopped there, like rapaDUra [panela, a sweet made of brown sugar]. Just like the teacher taught us in class. There, rapaDUra stopped at “DU” there. There's another thing to the metric. Now, we got “QUEI-JO E- RA-PA-DU-RA” [cheese and panela], then this “E” here joins this part. It counts as one. “QUEI” is together, it's one syllable. The metrics has a lot of that there. Sometimes, for us to metrify, we use a lot of words to shorten and to increase. We use POIS [as] and something else when we want to increase. Then, it is in that sense, but it is complicated. This one is a sextilha [six verses]. Then, it must have a maximum of seven poetic syllables and six verses. Verses are each line of a stanza. In this case, the sextilha consists of six verses where the even verses rhyme:

É riqueza do Nordeste

Cantada por Gonzagão,

Onildo imortalizou,

Na letra d'uma canção,

Vitalino com argila,

Retratou com perfeição ³⁷

Look, the “d’” I used because if I put “de uma” [of one] it would increase a syllable. Then, I put a “d’” there. Then, the second rhymes with the fourth, the fourth with the sixth and the others do not rhyme with any. Sometimes, there are people who do rhyming too, but only with these (1st, 3rd and 5th), but you can do it. It's called a cross rhyme. This (2nd, 4th and 6th) is alternating rhyme.³⁸ (Jailton Pereira, verbal information).

However, we identified that some cordel writers (J. Borges, Paulo Pereira and Zé Guri) were unable to verbalize, during the interview, the particular syllabic divisions (elision, syneresis, diaeresis, among others), which led us to conjecture that such a fact could be related to schooling and the social category of the generational type (the three poets were older and poorly educated). Apparently, the learning of metrification by these poets took place through the intense contact they had with the prints, especially for having worked as cordel leaflet sellers. What they said concerning what they did and knew about the metrics seemed to be very dependent on the categories of perception (and designation) that were internalized during socializing with these printouts — listening or reading — and with other cordel writers. Certainly, for this generation of poets, one learns to produce poems mainly through observation, imitation and the incorporation of metrics produced during the performance.

Certain metrification requirements (elision, syneresis, diaeresis) that required a certain degree of difficulty were hard to access, especially for the less educated poets. These poets said that when the verse had more than seven poetic syllables or ten (as the decasyllable verses demand), the reader should swallow or speak faster. Thus, the logic of orality, recitation and performance prevails. However, the last syllable(s) were disregarded, as the count is only made up to the stressed syllable:

In sextilha [six verses], the second with the fourth and the fourth with the sixth rhyme. These other three here are negative (1st, 3rd and 5th). Now, whoever has the practice starts writing right away … and it's ready.

Dadá ganhava mais

Por ser mais reboculosa

Usando roupas compostas

Era muito caprichosa

Tinha um riso atraente

E o gesto de dengosa.³⁹

This verse is bigger, but it works:

U (1) SAN (2) DO(3) ROU (4) PAS(5) COM(6) POS(7) TAS(8)

This one is eight, but when we read it we swallow, speak faster or swallow a letter. Generally is 7 or 8. If you put 9 it is no longer possible.⁴⁰ (J. Borges, personal information)

In this regard, when it comes to metrification, we realized that the difficulty of some poets in verbalizing how they did it seemed to be expressed in their responses, which often addressed the length of the verses, since “you cannot put a line with more and one with less. Many do the wrong cordel. They put a stanza with more lines and others with less. You have to measure it properly”⁴¹, said Paulo Pereira. To find out whether the verse was metrified, they did not necessarily resort to syllable counting, but they sang the cordel content in a previously recognized melody. Thus, it was mandatory that the verses “fit” in this melody, in the rhythm compass, in order to sound pleasant:

Metrics? Metrics is like this, as I said in that one:

Nos quatro cantos do mundo

Deus abençoa o amor⁴²

(the poet says singing)

If I said in the seventeen corners of the world, then it wouldn't work. It must be in the four corners or in the five corners. Metrics means exactly the same. It is the syllable that says it.

Nos-qua-tro-can-tos-do-mun-do

What is it? Is it six syllables here? Is it six? Then, if you put eight, it doesn't work. And if you put five, it's short. You must provide what goes according to the word.

Deus abençoa o amor [Tá certo também].

Nos quatro cantos do mundo

Deus abençoa o amor⁴³

[the poet says singing]

Then, the poet says:

Jesus que é o padroeiro

Jesus que é o meu pastor

Jesus é o meu amor

Jesus é advogado certeiro

É melhor do que dinheiro

Jesus sempre a meu favor

Jesus é superior

Primeiro sem segundo

Nos quatro cantos do mundo

Deus abençoa o amor ⁴⁴

[the poet says singing]

It's just like that. Then, if you put fewer letters or more letters, it becomes either short or long. This word compatibility has the same basis here. The same thing I say: it is the number of syllables. Got it?⁴⁵ (Zé Guri, personal information).

In this testimony, it is interesting to note that, to Zé Guri, the perception of rhythm was of extreme importance for the process of metrification. We can say, based on these interviewees (Zé Guri and Paulo Pereira), that, in each modality, the verses had the same duration (size), and the set of verses formed a larger structure (also with defined time). When a stanza was demetrified, it therefore meant that something present in the verses escaped the rhythmic and melodic patterns of that poetry:

Look, it's rhyme, metrics and plot. Cordel has all this. Now, you're going to make a cordel like that, but it's not right. You can't put a word that doesn't rhyme well. You must rhyme. Look, you are talking, then you must do the first part, the second, the fourth … You have to rhyme, and everything is rhymed. If it doesn't rhyme in writing, it's wrong. Cordel is like a song too. If you have a wrong word and you are going to sing it, you fail. The rhythm of the melody drops if it's wrong. Lookhere:

Tem muita gente que conta

Muita história engraçada

História de jogador

De pescador e caçada

E da velha sem cabeça

Lá da casa abandonada ⁴⁶

Can you see how it rhymes? If I make a rhyme and the metrics is wrong here, then the rhythm of the music falls. To make cordel is not just to say that you are going to do it. If it's wrong, it can't work.⁴⁷ (Paulo Pereira, verbal information).

In the poetic structure of the cordel, each line is considered a verse, and the set of verses (or lines) makes up the stanza. The different ways of distributing the verses in each verse are called, by cordel writers, as modality or style. Each modality has specific metric standards that should be followed by the writer. When a verse deviates from the metric standards of a modality, the poet is considered to have made a broken or demetrified verse. Regarding the difficulty of metrifying the cordels, Diosman reported:

Then, you see, some time passed, and people talked about metrics, the distribution of rhymes … And me, what is this about? To this day, I still find it very boring. I find the number of poetic syllables very boring. At first it was worse, but then I started … You see, in seven poetic syllables, we are already talking, if you pay attention, we are already talking in seven. And ten, which is more complicated. The repente writer uses more, is used more in repente, in the singing of the viola. Over time you get used to it, you start to write, it seems that it is ready. I'll explain it in a nicer way. As I told you, I don't like that part very much. You see, I brought some material here that I'm going to show you where the guy says:

Pra fazer boa poesia

Põe amor no coração

Abre teu peito e confia

Na tal metrificação ⁴⁸

Then, here he is dividing the syllables. Look, “Pra fazer boa poesia” [to make good poetry]. See right here how the division is being made. Then, using this stressed syllable, the strongest syllable I don't know … PRA-FA-ZERBO-A-POE-SIA. If you are going to count in grammatical syllables you will separate PO-E-SI-A, but in the poetic syllable see well how to speak POE-SIA. PÓE-A-MOR-NO-CO-RA-ÇÃO has seven poetic syllables.

Seven poetic syllables. “Abre teu peito e confia” [Open your chest and trust]. It would be eight, but you see here A-BRE-TEU-PEI-TO- E CON-FIA. See how it is here, look. The “E” [and], right? “E CONFIA” [and trust]? When I did this one, it was still a bit messy, then I had to make repairs on the metrics issue. For example, it was not in good metrics and I don't even know if it still is. But I had to make some corrections and metrify. Metrifying is the most complicated. Here, “vou dizer para vocês” [I’, going to tell you]. This one is easy. “VOU-DI-ZER-PA-RA-VO-CÊS”, seven syllables. […]. The issue of metrics, this is very boring, I think. I think a lot of people find it boring, but it's really cool to go deeper into the metrics issue to make less mistakes in poetry. Because, for example: those who don't understand will read and find it normal, but those who understand, another poet, a person who has studied, who knows a little, will read his poem and say: “The guy makes too many mistakes, the guy doesn't respect metrics, does not respect rhyme distribution, does not respect rhyme”. That is why we always have to … And the more you research … I am still studying and researching this metric issue myself.⁴⁹ (Diosman Avelino, verbal information).

In the Diosman's interview excerpt, the idea that complexity in metrification stems mainly from a series of poetic resources (signification, elision, diaeresis, syneresis and others) that poets often need to use to find out if the verse is metered or not. To automate certain rules, knowledge of them is not always enough or even contrary: the use of the rule is automated, but it is not possible to explain it verbally.

If, on the one hand, the data reveal that a group of poets (Val Tabosa, Diosman Avelino and Jailton Pereira) were able to explain the rules of metrification and, on some occasions, the possible poetic resources to be used in the text; on the other hand, there were those who, while recognizing the rules involving the amount of poetic syllables (heptasyllabic or decasyllabic), used exclusively the “singing” as a strategy for verifying the metrics of verses (Zé Guri, J. Borges and Paulo Pereira). Thus, as it is a genre in which oral and written are inextricably related, the counting of poetic syllables does not obey the same logic used in written poems, as it is subjected to elements of orality, such as popular dialects and performance.

Final considerations

Through the analysis of the cordel writers’ statements, we realized that they were highly sensitive to the rules of rhyme, even though their explanation depended, to a certain extent, on the learning of the standard written language. For the more experienced and less educated poets, the logics of oral and performance seemed to be more important than strict obedience to predetermined rhyme patterns.

Regarding the metrics, we showed that certain precepts were difficult to verbalize, even for the cordel writers with a higher level of education. We saw that some poets (less educated) predominantly used the “singing” resource to check if the verses were, in fact, metrified and had more difficulty in verbalizing the counting of the poetic syllables of the verses. Many even claimed that the criterion of the number of syllables in metrification could be made more flexible, since it is in oral performance that everything adjusts.

In this sense, one of the possible explanations is that metrics, as Sautchuk (2009) informs about singing, is an incorporated and unconscious foundation, whereas the rhyme (as a technique) would, in some way, require deliberated teaching and learning. This way, we can deploy Lahire's (1998) discussion that individuals are more aware of explicit learning and know little about cognitive dispositions constructed unconsciously.

This led us to infer that the more educated poets (Val Tabosa, Diosman Avelino and Jailton Pereira) may not have learned the rules of metrics, exclusively, through contact with other cordel writers or through the reading/listening of several cordels, but also through a certain systematic study of the rules. This also allowed us to consider that the greater mastery of the written language could provide more sophisticated levels of explicitness and verbalization that often are not found in people with little education. However, it is important to note that the difficulty of verbalization does not correspond per se to the lack of explicit knowledge, as knowledge may be explicit, but not accessible to conscience and much less to verbalization (KARMILOFF-SMITH, 1994).

In the specific case of the cordel genre, failing to make explicit the rules that underlie its elaboration does not seem to have any effect on the judgment of the quality of the poems produced and of the recognized competence of the poets, insofar as other elements besides the text itself — as the oral, the gestural and the performance — are, even today, constitutive of it. In addition, the research data revealed that, even when they are unable to verbalize the compositional aspects of the cordels, poets — including those with little schooling — engage in a complex and sophisticated process of metalinguistic reflection.

• 1
  “Cordel” is a literary genre written in rhyme. It is called “cordel” because of the way the text used to be presented: hanging from a string. The stanzas are made of verses, whose authors recite them in a melodious way, usually accompanied by a musical instrument.
• 2
  The research that originated this work was carried out with the support of the Foundation for the Support of Science and Technology of the State of Pernambuco (FACEPE) - Brazil.
• 3
  See, for example, Ong (1998) and Goody (1977).
• 4
  Plot, for example, is related, in a way, to the thematic content, and the rhymes, in turn, seem to be linked also to the stylistic aspects of the genre.
• 5
  Original: “[…] estão indissoluvelmente ligados no todo do enunciado e são igualmente determinados pela especificidade de um determinado campo da comunicação.” (BAKHTIN, 2011, p.261-262).
• 6
  The examples will be maintained in their original (Portuguese) so the reader can have an idea of the rhymes. The translation or explanation of the words will be provided. In this case, Juazeiro – a town in the state of Bahia, Brazil; pedreiro – mason; café – coffee; Assaré - a town in the state of Ceará, Brazil; mulher - woman.
• 7
  cordel tem exigências — cordel has demands.
• 8
  Some poets usually call the setilha “seven by seven”, given the equivalent amount of poetic verses and syllables employed. In the case of setilhas, the distribution of rhymes is ABCBDDB (the second, fourth and seventh verses rhyme with each other, while the fifth and sixth have a second rhyme).
• 9
  For a discussion of the role of performance in oral genres or in those in which the different dimensions of language are constitutive of the genre itself (and not only make up its context of enunciation), see, among others, Zumthor (1993, 2007) and Finnegan (2015).
• 10
  The original names and, in some cases, the artistic names of the poets were maintained at their choosing and in accordance with the Free and Informed Consent Term signed by them.
• 11
  Original: “Rima, métrica e oração. Rimas são as terminações das palavras. Tem rimas fonéticas e as rimas consoantes. […] Também tem a oração. A oração é o enredo, é a história. Às vezes, você pode fazer várias rimas, mas não ter conteúdo agradável. O que vai acontecer na próxima estrofe, né? Então, isso é a oração. Outra coisa importante no cordel é a metrificação. Na metrificação é importante as sílabas de cada verso. O verso é a linha. Uma linha. Então, a gente constrói o verso em sete sílabas e em dez sílabas. Às vezes passa uma, mas tem a consideração da sílaba poética. Ela deve ser a tônica ou a sílaba poética […]”. (Val Tabosa, personal communication).
• 12
  When we refer to the onset in a syllable, we are referring to the syllable position that involves the segments that precede the vowel of the syllable. Using the syllable “lar” as an example, the consonant (l) is in the onset position, and the rhyme concerns all segments that do not include the onset (ar).
• 13
  Original: “Se não tiver rima, eu mesmo não considero cordel não” (J. Borges, personal information)
• 14
  Original: “Todo cordel tem que ter rima, porque é uma característica do cordel” (Val Tabosa, personal information).
• 15
  Original: “Se não tiver, não é cordel. Alguém pode chegar e dizer, o cara que faz, que é cordel, mas não é não. O cordel tem que ser uma poesia popular. Poesia popular, se não tiver rima, não é poesia.” (Jailton Pereira, personal information).
• 16
  We also recognize that the Brazilian cordel has fixed forms, rigidly established in terms of metrics, rhyme and plot, unlike Portuguese cordel literature, in which there is no such uniformity (ABREU, 2006b).
• 17
  Original: “Se não tiver rima eu mesmo não considero cordel não. Eu considero o formato só, o formato que é de cordel, mas a escrita eu considero que é um livreto de prosa, escrito em prosa.”
• 18
  Original: “Dizem que o cordel veio de Portugal, num sei o que e tal… Mas eu digo pra você: pra mim, o cordel nasceu foi no Brasil. Acho que cordel é 100 % brasileiro. Eu ainda não me aprofundei pesquisando, ainda não li nenhuma literatura de lá, que seria um cordel de outro país, mas dizem também que era sem métrica, era sem rima. Então, pra mim, se era sem rima não era cordel. Pra mim o cordel é 100 % brasileiro. O cordel tem que ser nacional mesmo, principalmente nordestino.” (Diosman Avelino, personal communication).
• 19
  Original: “Se não tiver rima não é cordel. Tem que ter rima, metrificar. Olhe, é rima, métrica e oração. O cordel tem isso tudo. Agora, você vai fazer um cordel assim de doido, mas não tá certo. Você não pode botar uma palavra que não rime direito. Você tem que rimar. Se não rimar na escrita, tá errado.” (Paulo Pereira, personal information).
• 20
  Original: “Rimas são as terminações das palavras. Têm rimas fonéticas e as rimas consoantes. As rimas consoantes são as rimas que terminam com as letras iguais. E as fonéticas… Por exemplo, eu digo MEL e digo CÉU, rimou, mas a grafia é diferente. Se eu digo CORAÇÃO e digo AÇÃO, as rimas são iguais, mas a grafia também é igual. Então, quanto mais as rimas forem consoantes melhor, mas o que vale é a rima. As fonéticas são as rimas em que a grafia é diferente, mas o som é igual, como eu dei o exemplo (CÉU e MEL). Se escreve diferente, mas se rima igual. Isso é possível dentro da poesia.” (Val Tabosa, personal information).
• 21
  Original: “[…] Então, quer dizer que aqui foi três palavras rimadas [aponta para o cordel]. Aqui chegou a CANTORIA pra rimar com VENTANIA. GURI, CARIRI e ALI rima. CANTORIA rima com VENTANIA. Aqui eu botei CORAGEM, VIAGEM e LAJE. Essa aqui é seis. Aqui é sextilha. ALGUÉM rima com BEM. Essa parte aqui [a primeira linha] fica parada. A segunda rima com a quarta e a sexta. Pra dar certo mesmo tem que ser a escrita igual, porque quando não tá igual não rima não. O poeta velho disse: “Você pra ser cantador tem de pegar um folheto do melhor que tem e olhar os versos se rimam ou não rimam. Sabe?”. Aí, esse aqui é um dos melhores (A donzela Teodora, de Leandro Gomes de Barros). Acho que aqui é tropeçar ou é tropeço? É “torpeza”. E aqui é “acesa” e aqui é “surpresa”. Todos eles são assim. É por que, às vezes, um “Z” como “JOSÉ”. Num tem gente que bota um “Z” e outro bota um “S”? É um “S” no som de “Z”. Tem letra que cabe. O “Z” tem vez que pega o “S”. SUPRESA, ACESA e TORPEZA eu rimo. Se não tiver certo, então eu não sei não. Tem muitas coisas assim, como JESUS com CRUZ. JESUS eu rimo com CRUZ. Todo poeta rima com CRUZ, mas parece que a letra é diferente. Ou não? Mas é rimado. Por que o som só não dá assim: CANTOU e CANTOR, mas JESUS com CRUZ tá rimado. ACESA com BELEZA ou MASSA com PRAÇA ou com CACHAÇA. Eu rimo tudo. Se não tiver rimado, então tem pouca gente errado. Porque CACHAÇA, PRAÇA, MASSA, FAÇA, TAÇA, muda a letra mas está rimado. E se for pra rimar do jeito que a letra é vai ter pouco cabra certo.” (Zé Guri, personal information).
• 22
  Original: “A rima deve sempre obedecer a aquilo que eu já falei: a rima consoante, que é considerada a rima verdadeira e não aquela rima disfarçada (chamada fonética ou sonante), tipo CANTAR e CEARÁ, tipo VIOLA e HORA. Esse tipo aí de rima não serve. Se o cordel tiver uma rima sonante, ele já começa perdendo um ponto aí, no caso do concurso. Pra você escrever um trabalho que você não está sendo analisado é diferente. Embora até quando eu faça à vontade, eu também busco prezar por isso que você me perguntou sobre o que o cordel tem que ter pra ser bom. Aí, eu sempre prezo pela rima, métrica e oração.” (Jailton Pereira, personal information).
• 23
  Original: “Pra ser um bom cordel têm que ter as rimas todas positivas […]. Agora, se não tiver rima eu mesmo não considero cordel não. Eu considero o formato só, o formato que é de cordel, mas a escrita eu considero que é um livreto de prosa, escrito em prosa. A rima positiva é essa: PREGUIÇA, ATIÇA e COBIÇA. Essas são positivas. E é como eu disse a você: aquela pronúncia de RÉU e CORDEL, essa é comparativa. Já a rima negativa é quando você escreve PENSAMENTO e TEMPO. Isso aqui é rima negativa, não rima nada.” (J. Borges, personal information).
• 24
  In some Brazilian regions, people are used to omit the final “r” of words such as in “mulher” - “mulhé” [woman]; amor - “amô” [love].
• 25
  Matuto poetry is a genre that portrays the life and the way of talking of the rural man (called matuto) from the Northeastern region of Brazil.
• 26
  Carim – used by Zé Guri for “carinho”, a Portuguese word that means affection, caress, fondness.
• 27
  Repente: Brazilian art based on improvised alternated singing by two singers, accompanied by violas, very present in the Northeastern Brazil.
• 28
  Very popular art from Northeast Brazil. It consists of a pair of “singers” who, to the sound of the tambourine, assemble metric, fast and improvised verses, in a kind of competition. The partner must improvise a quick and well-thought-out response to be triumphant.
• 29
  Original: “Eu ia cantar e rimava CANTAR com GUARANÁ e não pode. Eu rimava BELO JARDIM e botava CARIM e não dá. Botava DORMIR, eu rimava com GURI. Nesse tempo, eu não sabia ler quase nada. Agora eu leio muito. Eu não sou escolarizado, mas leio muito e naquele tempo eu lia pouco. Naquele tempo eu trabalhava no sítio, só vivia trabalhando. Aí, o cantador disse: “Você sabe ler?”. Eu disse: “Sei”. Aí, ele mandava eu soletrar GURI e DORMIR e eu soletrava. Ele dizia: “Para você rimar GURI você tem que procurar as letras que terminam com R e I e um agudo”. Aí, a poesia tem muito a ver com a leitura. Pode ser cordel, pode ser repente, pode ser embolada, quanto mais o poeta sabe ler, mais ele se desenvolve. Ele sendo analfabeto, ele canta um bocado de coisa errada, não fala bem. Eu mesmo não sei falar nada porque não tive escola. Eu sei ler, mas nunca cheguei numa aula para uma professora dizer “essa palavra não é assim, é assim” pra eu ficar sabendo. Eu me criei falando do jeito que papai falava e mamãe falava, a linguagem matuta e pronto. Ninguém nunca disse: “Não é assim, é assim”. Se eu tivesse estudado igual meu menino, ele já é professor. Ele não fala o português errado não. Sempre é certo, mesmo. Todo mundo que estudou fala certo, porque aprendeu, mas eu não aprendi. Eu aprendi a ler por eu mesmo. Eu sei muito ler, mas comigo mesmo.” (Zé Guri, personal information).
• 30
  Original: “No caso, o que eu geralmente dou uma reparada é tentar deixar mais ou menos com a métrica, porque acontece ainda de não ter tanta métrica. Eu evito repetir rimas, palavras, por exemplo, CRUEL, NOEL e PAPEL. Evito essa repetição de rimas. Não acho muito bacana a pessoa ficar repetindo a mesma palavra várias vezes na mesma história… Aí, vai aqui (pá- pá- pá- cruel). Aí, num sei o que cruel… tá faltando assunto no caso. Evito um pouco isso, sempre vejo e acontece de passar despercebido. Eu fiz um poema há pouco tempo e coloquei um verso que dizia que o trovão grita sorrindo e a criançada grita sorrindo. Aí, eu mudei. Eu deixei o da criançada grita sorrindo e coloquei que o trovão grita tinindo… Aí, eu evito um pouquinho essa questão de repetição de palavras que rimam. Mas qual a palavra que nunca foi repetida, né?” (Diosman Avelino, personal information).
• 31
  Original: “A gente vai no dicionário, ou coisa assim, para ver se fez muita besteira. Eu uso mais dicionário em significados, procurando sinônimos. Às vezes, você vai numa determinada rima e quer dizer alguma coisa, aí você procura uma palavra com aquele sentido que você queria dizer, mas ela não dá a rima, aí é onde você procura uma palavra sinônima. Aí, eu uso o dicionário para isso. […]. Às vezes uma palavra perde o sentido da estrofe. É nesse sentido também.” (Jailton Pereira, personal information).
• 32
  Original: “[…] Têm muitos poetas que não escrevem na “DEIXA” e eu, sim, escrevo na “DEIXA”. A “DEIXA”, o cara termina uma estrofe e começa a outra rimando com a última palavra da frase anterior. Eu acho que isso é coisa minha. Eu achei bacana para memorizar o poema. Eu memorizo mais fácil do que aquelas que não são com “DEIXA”. Quando eu termino uma estrofe eu já estou me lembrando da primeira frase da outra estrofe. Você lembrando a primeira, automaticamente, você lembra do resto. O trabalho é a primeira linha.” (Jailton Pereira, personal information).
• 33
  In english: I'm a Northeastern poet/ And I'm not by choice/ When I was a boy/ I was already doing refrains/ This is the work of the divine/ And there's no explanation.
• 34
  Original: “A sextilha, você vai ver aqui, as palavras que rimam são geralmente números pares, dois, quatro e seis. Um, três e cinco não rimam. Mas eu tenho um poema que rima todas. Mas é raro. Eu fazia mais isso porque eu ainda não… Eu ainda tava aprendendo. Por exemplo, eu vi um poema intitulado “Sou Poeta Nordestino”, tem várias que rimam todas.

  Sou poeta nordestino

  E não sou por opção

  No tempo de menino

  Já fazia um refrão

  Isso é obra do divino

  E não tem explicação

  É rimando tudo aqui ó: a primeira com a terceira e com a quinta e as pares com as pares. É mais trabalhoso. Você tem que ter mais palavras pra rimar, e aqui não.” (Diosman Avelino, personal information).

• 35
  “P” Language is a game played in Brazil which consists of putting the letter “p” before every syllable. Similar to Pig Latin.
• 36
  Original: “Esse aqui é em dez. É em dez. POR-QUE-BA-TI-ZAR-CRI-AN-ÇA? [o poeta faz a contagem batendo os dedos na mesa]. É em dez versos e em sete sílabas. Essa última (ÇA) foge, mas tem a sílaba poética. Aí, é considerado oito, nove. Por que é difícil conseguir deixar com as sete mesmo […]. Por exemplo, falando desse cordel aqui “Moto Clube Águias do Agreste”. Eu vou fazer um poema pra o Águia do Agreste, não vou logo digitando, eu faço primeiro num papel. Faço no papel. Se não der certo, eu jogo e pego outro. Aí quando está mais ou menos pronto eu vou digitar, porque a digitação também é interessante para metrificação. Então, quando eu vou digitar, digito também devagar. Aí eu faço a metrificação e essa metrificação eu faço contando mesmo nos dedos pra que fique dentro do que é regulamentado, pra que a gente não saia do padrão. Se você vai declamar um poema pra um poeta, ele vê logo os defeitos ou os acertos.” (Val Tabosa, personal information).
• 37
  In english: It's Northeast wealth/ Sung by Gonzagão,/ Onildo immortalized,/ In the lyrics of a song,/ Vitalino with clay,/ Perfectly portrayed.
• 38
  Original: “A métrica é o tamanho de cada linha em sílabas, que não é em sílabas gramaticais, mas em sílabas poéticas. É um pouquinho diferente. Você começa a contar quando chega na sílaba tônica, tipo aqui: E -NÃO-VE-JO- QUEM-CON-TES-TE. O “E” inicial é uma, aí o “NÃO” conta todinho, o “VE”, o “JO” e o “QUEM” contam separadamente, e em “conTESte” o mais forte é o “TES”. Aí parou aí. Aí, é sete porque a última não conta. Geralmente, todas têm que ficar com sete obedecendo a isso aí. Essas aqui todas são com sete, mas, algumas vezes, umas não saem com sete. Isso também não prejudica a métrica não por causa do jeito que a poesia é feita. É complicada a poesia por isso. Isso vai naturalmente. Essa aqui é a mesma coisa, o que vai diferenciar é a sílaba mais forte no final da palavra. Quando chega na sílaba mais forte da última palavra, aí parou, tipo rapaDUra. Igual a como a professora ensinava a gente na aula. Aí, o rapaDUra parou em DU aí. Tem outra coisa a métrica. Chegou aqui em “QUEI-JO E- RA-PA-DU-RA”, aí esse E aqui se junta pra cá. Ele conta como um só. QUEI é junto, é uma sílaba só. A métrica tem muito isso aí. Às vezes, pra gente metrificar, a gente usa muito palavras pra encurtar e para aumentar. A gente usa POIS e mais alguma coisa quando quer aumentar. Aí, é nesse sentido, mas é complicado. Esse aqui é uma sextilha. Aí, ela tem que ter no máximo sete sílabas poéticas e seis versos. Versos são cada linha de uma estrofe. No caso, a sextilha é composta por seis versos e rimam os versos pares:

  É riqueza do Nordeste

  Cantada por Gonzagão,

  Onildo imortalizou,

  Na letra d'uma canção,

  Vitalino com argila,

  Retratou com perfeição

  Olhe, o “d’” eu usei porque se eu botasse “de uma” aumentava uma sílaba. Aí, botei um “d’” aí. Aí, a segunda rima com a quarta, a quarta com a sexta e as outras não rima com ninguém. Às vezes, tem gente que faz rimando também, mas só que com essas (1º, 3º e 5º), Mas, pode fazer. É chamada rima cruzada. Essa (2º, 4º e 6º) é alternante ou alternada.” (Jailton Pereira, verbal information).

• 39
  In english: Dadá earned more/ Because she has great and seductive forms./ Wearing matching clothes/ She was very capricious/ Had an attractive smile/ And a gesture of gracefulness.
• 40
  Original: “Na sextilha rima a segunda com a quarta e a quarta com a sexta. Essas outras três aqui são negativas (1º, 3º e 5º). Agora, quem tem a prática já vai escrevendo… Já sai.

  Dadá ganhava mais

  Por ser mais reboculosa

  Usando roupas compostas

  Era muito caprichosa

  Tinha um riso atraente

  E o gesto de dengosa.

  Essa tá maior o verso, mas dá:

  U (1) SAN (2) DO(3) ROU (4) PAS(5) COM(6) POS(7) TAS(8)

  Essa está com oito, mas a gente lendo a gente engole, fala mais rápido ou engole uma letra. O geral é 7 ou 8. Se botar 9 já não dá mais.” (J. Borges, personal information)

• 41
  Original: “não se pode colocar uma linha com mais e outra com menos não. Muitos fazem o cordel errado. Botam uma estrofe com mais linhas e outras com menos. Tem que metrificar direitinho” (J. Borges, personal information)
• 42
  In english: In the four corners of the world/ God blesses Love.
• 43
  In english: God blesses love [That's right too]./ In the four corners of the world/ God Blesses Love.
• 44
  In english: “Jesus who is the patron/ Jesus who is my shepherd/ Jesus is my love/ Jesus is a just lawyer/ It's better than money/ Jesus always on my behalf/ Jesus is superior/ First without second/ In the four corners of the world/ God Blesses Love.
• 45
  Original: “A métrica? A métrica é assim, é como eu disse naquele ali:

  Nos quatro cantos do mundo

  Deus abençoa o amor

  (o poeta diz cantando)

  Se eu dissesse nos dezessete cantos do mundo, aí já não dava. Tem que ser nos quatro cantos ou nos cinco cantos. A métrica quer dizer igualzinha. É a sílaba que diz.

  Nos-qua-tro - can-tos- do- mun-do

  É o que? É seis sílabas aqui? Dá seis? Aí, se botar oito não dá. E se botar cinco também fica curto. Tem que dar conforme a palavra.

  Deus abençoa o amor [Tá certo também].

  Nos quatro cantos do mundo

  Deus abençoa o amor

  (o poeta diz cantando)

  Aí, o poeta diz:

  Jesus que é o padroeiro

  Jesus que é o meu pastor

  Jesus é o meu amor

  Jesus é advogado certeiro

  É melhor do que dinheiro

  Jesus sempre a meu favor

  Jesus é superior

  Primeiro sem segundo

  Nos quatro cantos do mundo

  Deus abençoa o amor

  (o poeta diz cantando)

  É igualzinho. Aí, se colocar menos letras ou mais letras, aí fica ou curto ou comprido. Essa palavra compatibilidade tem a mesma base daqui. A mesma coisa que eu digo: é a quantidade de sílabas. Entendeu?” (Zé Guri, personal information)

• 46
  In english: There are many people who tell/ Lots of funny stories/ Stories of players/ Fishermen and hunting/ And the headless old woman/ There from the abandoned house.
• 47
  Original: “[…] Olhe, é rima, métrica e oração. O cordel tem isso tudo. Agora, você vai fazer um cordel assim de doido, mas não tá certo. Você não pode botar uma palavra que não rime direito. Você tem que rimar. Olhe, você está conversando, aí você tem que pegar e fazer a primeira parte, a segunda, a quarta… Tem que rimar e ficar tudo rimadinho. Se não rimar na escrita tá errado. O cordel é como uma música também. Se tiver uma palavra errada e você for cantar ele, você erra. Cai o ritmo da melodia se tiver errado. Você repare aqui, ó:

  Tem muita gente que conta

  Muita história engraçada

  História de jogador

  De pescador e caçada

  E da velha sem cabeça

  Lá da casa abandonada

  Tá vendo como rima direitinho? Se eu fizer uma rima e a métrica errada aqui, aí cai o ritmo da música. Pra fazer cordel não é só dizer que vai fazer não. Se tiver errado não pode dar certo.” (Paulo Pereira, verbal information).

• 48
  In english: To make good poetry/ Put love in your heart/ Open your chest and trust/ In the so called metrification.
• 49
  Original: “Aí, veja bem, passou um tempo e o pessoal falava sobre a métrica, a distribuição de rimas… E eu, que bexiga é essa? Até hoje eu ainda acho muito chato. Acho muito chato a contagem de sílabas poéticas. No começo é pior, mas depois eu comecei… Veja bem, em sete sílabas poéticas, a gente já conversando a gente já está falando em sete se parar pra ver. E dez, que é mais complicado. O repentista usa mais, é mais usado no repente, na cantoria de viola. Com o tempo você vai se acostumando, você começa a escrever, parece que já sai pronto. Eu vou lhe explicar de uma forma mais bacana. Como eu falei pra você, eu não gosto muito dessa parte. Veja bem, eu trouxe um material aqui que eu vou mostrar pra você onde o cara diz que:

  Pra fazer boa poesia

  Põe amor no coração

  Abre teu peito e confia

  Na tal metrificação

  Aí, aqui ele tá dividindo as sílabas. Olhe, “Pra fazer boa poesia”. Veja bem aqui como tá sendo feita a divisão. Aí, você usando essa questão de sílaba tônica, a sílaba mais forte num sei o que… PRA-FA-ZERBO-A-POE-SIA. Se você for contar em sílabas gramaticais você vai separar PO-E-SI-A, mas na sílaba poética veja bem como se fala POE-SIA. PÕE-A-MOR-NO-CO-RA-ÇÃO tem sete sílabas poéticas.

  Sete sílabas poéticas. “Abre teu peito e confia”. Seria oito, mas você vê aqui A-BRE-TEU-PEI-TO- E CON-FIA. Vê como tá aqui, ó. O “E”, né? “E CONFIA”? Quando eu fiz esse daqui, era um pouco bagunçado ainda, depois eu tive que fazer reparos na questão da métrica. Por exemplo, ele não tava numa métrica bacana e nem sei se ainda tá. Mas, eu tive que fazer umas correções e metrificar. Metrificar é o mais complicado. Aqui ó, “vou dizer para vocês”. Esse aqui tá fácil. “VOU-DI-ZER-PA-RA-VO-CÊS”, sete sílabas. […] A questão da métrica, isso é muito chato, eu acho. Acho que muita gente acha chato, mas é muito bacana se aprofundar na questão da métrica pra errar menos na poesia. Porque, um exemplo: quem não entende vai ler e achar normal, mas quem entende, um outro poeta, uma pessoa que estudou, que conhece um pouco, vai ler seu poema e vai dizer: “O cara erra demais, o cara não respeita métrica, não respeita distribuição de rima, não respeita a rima”. Por isso que a gente tem que tá sempre… E quanto mais você pesquisar… Eu mesmo ainda estou estudando e pesquisando bem essa questão de métrica.” (Diosman Avelino, verbal information).

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the cordel writers interviewed for their willingness to grant their testimonies, without which this work would not have been possible, and to the Foundation for the Support of Science and Technology of the State of Pernambuco (FACEPE), for the financial support for carrying out the research that gave rise to this article.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Dec 2020
• Date of issue
  2020

History

• Received
  18 Aug 2019
• Accepted
  03 Feb 2020