{"id":1827,"date":"2017-03-10T23:16:57","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T07:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=1827"},"modified":"2017-12-17T11:29:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-17T19:29:23","slug":"string-tales-inspired-by-literatura-de-cordel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=1827","title":{"rendered":"String Tales – my “literatura de cordel”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pamphlets, broadsides, newsletters, flyers,<\/span>
\n leaflets, booklets, chapbooks, and zines<\/span><\/h3>\n

From one to maybe 24 pages, quickly and cheaply produced and easily distributed \u2013 these print forms fit my style. Over the years I\u2019ve produced many variations on the form.<\/p>\n

Recently, I\u2019ve started turning some of my blog posts into small publications. I make them myself and call them \u201cString Tales.\u201d I reformat the text and images, print them on an inexpensive color printer that prints up to 11×17 inches, fold them twice, hang them on a line, and give them away.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The inspiration for the form\u00a0is a tradition I first learned about\u00a0from\u00a0Don Russell, a friend in Washington DC who founded and runs Provisions Library: Art for Social Change.1<\/sup>\u00a0Literatura de cordel<\/em>, or \u201cstring literature,\u201d \u00a0is a popular form of publishing that thrives in Brazil.\u00a0Don and a team from Provisions traveled to Brazil to research the tradition. After their trip, the Provisions team put together a mobile print workshop and took it\u00a0into DC neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Wanting to know more, I followed leads from the Provisions website to other references and stories about this \u201cstring literature\u201d and who makes it.<\/p>\n

They are the bards of the backlands, traveling with their poems from town to town and market to market. Practitioners of an art form that originated in medieval Europe and is now mostly obsolete elsewhere, they nonetheless continue to thrive here.2
\n<\/sup><\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2014 Larry Rohter describing \u201cthe troubadours of Brazil\u2019s backlands\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These poets and storytellers travel through towns in northeastern Brazil, reciting or singing their stories and poems in marketplaces, often to townspeople unable to read or write, and offering them for sale in small, cheaply-printed booklets pinned on cords or strings (cordel<\/em>) hung across market stalls. Bold woodcut graphics on the covers attract passers-by.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The roots of the tradition are deep, fed by many sources \u2013 one-page flyers brought to Brazil from Portugal in the 16th and 17th centuries, song traditions of medieval troubadours, Iberian ballads, and moral themes from biblical stories and from African and Brazilian-Indian traditions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Literatura de cordel<\/em> is a living, breathing, popular tradition with themes that range from fantastic heroes to local politics. According to a blurb describing a 2011 symposium on cordel<\/em>, themes include \u201ccritiques of current international and local events, humor and satire, adventure, romance, sensational or moralistic narratives, religion, the exploits of heroes and bandits, environmental concerns, educational advice on health and child-care, and more.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In addition to the traditional chapbooks, cordel<\/em> blogs are now active on the internet. A quick online search for \u201ccordel<\/em> blogs\u201d demonstrated just how true this is. Even though I know no Portuguese, I lost myself moving from one site to the next.<\/p>\n

Especially as the form is\u00a0practiced\u00a0today, cordel<\/em> stories can take\u00a0oral or\u00a0print or\u00a0now digital forms. I’ve long been fascinated by\u00a0the potential\u00a0of\u00a0a story or an idea that begins in live conversation and gets picked up and shared in print, with\u00a0details and meaning shifting slightly. Then that print piece, in turn, might be put online, again with adaptations. Or the order might change, with a digital piece prompting a conversation, which becomes a reference in a book or magazine.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful for the capacity of digital networks to send messages, like my blog posts, across otherwise impassable distances. But I\u2019m willing to bet that when I hand someone one of my String Tales rather than\u00a0giving them a link to my website, the chance that they’ll actually read\u00a0it increases a\u00a0hundredfold.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/h4>\n

1.\u00a0Provisions Library: Art for Social Change<\/a>
\nFrom the website: “Provisions investigates the relationship between art and social change through research, production, and education. From its library home in\u00a0George Mason University\u2019s School of Art in Fairfax, Virginia and at sites throughout the District,\u00a0Provisions produces and supports projects in the US Capitol Region and across the globe.”<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u201cTroubadours of Brazil\u2019s Backlands<\/a>,\u201d Larry Rohter, The New York Times, <\/em>June 14, 2005.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Literatura de Cordel<\/em>: Continuity and Change in Brazilian Popular Culture<\/a>, a symposium, American Folklife Center, 2011.<\/p>\n

Sources of cordel photos<\/span><\/h4>\n

Arte em cordel<\/a>,\u00a0Museu do Cordel Curiosidades.<\/p>\n

Aula de arte,<\/a> Literatura de Cordel, 19 de Novembro de 2015.<\/p>\n

Espa\u00e7o de la Cruz<\/a>, Fotos \u2013 Decora\u00e7\u00e3o e divers\u00e3o 2.<\/p>\n

Photos of String Tales are my own.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pamphlets, broadsides, newsletters, flyers, leaflets, booklets, chapbooks, and zines From one to maybe 24 pages, quickly and cheaply produced and easily distributed \u2013 these print forms fit my style. Over the years I\u2019ve produced many variations on the form. Recently, I\u2019ve started turning some of my blog posts into small publications. I make them myself…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-re-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7pXN0-tt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1827"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2538,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827\/revisions\/2538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}