The collection
Since 2005, Library has been collecting Brazilian chapbooks to enrich its special collections dedicated to Brazil. The Library now owns over 560 items in that collection.
Click here to see the list of chapbooks at Brown University Library. All chapbooks are housed in the Library’s remote storage facility to maintain optimum preservation standards.
About Literatura de cordel
Literatura de cordel (“string” or “cordel literature”) is a genre of popular literature characteristic of northeastern Brazil. Brought to the country by the first Portuguese colonists, the Brazilian cordel stems from the European tradition of ballad and broadside poetry, and derives its name from the cord on which the booklets are customarily suspended for display in open-air fairs. These inexpensive chapbooksor folhetos have circulated in Brazil for centuries, and are now considered an important part of Brazilian folk and popular culture.
Cordel narratives presented in written form used to be sung on the streets by a poet-improviser or repentista who would create stories on the spot, using action and people around him as inspiration. It is still quite common to find repentistas performing verbal duels (“pelejas”) in contemporary Brazil, in which two singers match verses about tragicomic or historical motives with moral implications. Men of modest means, repentistas embody the fears, dreams and politics of people struck by poverty and drought in the poorest region of Brazil.
Cordel chapbooks are like fables, a genre percolated by magical realism whose fantastical twists of fate seem to touch the most mundane lives. At least since the nineteenth century, they have functioned as a cheap source of news, entertainment and moral counsel in the Northeast. As rural Brazilians migrated to the more economically prosperous cities located in the southeast, the cordel became an increasingly urban phenomenon and gained popularity among middle-class readers and university intellectuals.
Most chapbooks have eye-catching block print covers and comic titles. Cordel verses are almost always written in multiples of four, and explore a wide range of themes, including critiques of local and international current events, heroes, romance, religion, and social banditry, among others. The booklets are often self-published or printed by low-quality small independent presses. The Mysterious Peacock, Lampião in Hell, and Coconut and Watermelon are among the most well-known cordels in Brazil.
