A monstruosidade na Literatura de Cordel: fronteira e semiosfera nos sertões brasileiros
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Monsters and monstrous creatures sneak through the gaps in mythical and sacred narratives and find their way into films, TV series, electronic games, comic books and novels. In Brazilian cordel, monsters terrorize their victims and antagonize the heroes. These encounters occur in remote, peripheral locations, such as inhospitable forests, abandoned houses and lands beyond the sea — which is beyond geographical limits, the edges of the possible. With imprecise etymology and meanings, the sertão is an opening for inventiveness and unpredictability. More than a contiguous territory that shares socioeconomic, climatic, geographic and cultural characteristics, this outback periphery has symbolic aspects and, as a border, opposes values such as modern, sophisticated and safe. This article analyzes the presence of monsters in Cordel Literature. To this end, the concepts of border, translation and semiosphere are involved, according to the thoughts of Iuri Lotman (1990). Ambiguous, the backcountry territory refers both to the arid interior regions of northeastern Brazil, ravaged by drought and poverty, and to the imaginary spaces of literature, inhabited by fantastic beings and wandering monsters.
Source: Galáxia (São Paulo)
Language: Portuguese
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7128494504