Roaming Heroes and Their Ballads: Brazilian Cordel Narratives in the Context of the Global Broadside Ballad Tradition

Abstract

Kateřina Březinová deals with the geographically most far afield, yet closely related phenomenon in this study, Brazilian cordel literature. The author explores cordel as a part of a global broadside ballad tradition with roots in the Iberian Peninsula, yet deeply shaped by Brazil’s cultural and social conditions. Since the late nineteenth century, cordel spread quickly and widely in space, time, and focus. Březinová demonstrates that cordel’s form and narrative were particularly transformed by the multiple processes of migration it experienced in Brazil. Though previously disdained as “unsophisticated” and “low,” cordel literature is now, ironically, cherished as a major part of the nation’s cultural patrimony.