Abstract
This article deals with the emergence of the so-called "drought literature" of Brazilian North in the second half of the nineteenth century, and how this literature built a narrative structure for this phenomenon, centered on the event of migration, which will serve as a template for all subsequent literary production on droughts in this country. Drawing upon two classic narrative models of Western culture - the exodus narrative and the narrative of the Stations of the Cross -, this literature has brought forth a set of images and statements that, even today, remains as if it were the drought in Northeastern Brazil itself. Ignored by the vast historiography on the topic, these scenes and images will be originally shaped and, afterwards, recurrently presented in the self-proclaimed "regionalist" literature. Later on, they were appropriated by other narrative and artistic genres. Even in constant reworking and reinscription, these migrant images survive and return periodically in the discourses on this purportedly regional phenomenon.
Keywords:
drought literature; narrative structure; migrant images