Utopia no cordel" Viajem Sào Saruê:’, de Manuel Camilo dos Santas.

Abstract

This research analyzes the cordel – as a typical artistic manifestation of the Brazilian northeast - “Viagem a São Saruê” [Travel to São Saruê], of 1956, by the writer from the Brazilian state of Paraíba, highlighting utopic elements, since it deals with an ideal place, whose features are proper of literary utopias. This work is one of the great literary ones of the cordel, and it has a critical and social bias, having its composition modelled by a mix of popular and erudite elements. We will present critic and theoretical discussions about utopic and dystopic literatures, providing a broader comprehension about them, in order to place the cordel in study in such a context, showing how this theme of utopia is present in other literary works of the Brazilian and international literatures, and also in music and in movies. We will also present a historical panorama of the writer and his poetics. Thus, this bibliographical research is of a exploratory nature, marked by a qualitative approach, and based on the theoretical support of Funck (1993), Gomes; Bezerra (2014), Monteiro (2018), Nunes (2014), Obeid (2009), Silva (2008), Silva (2008), among others. The analysis will show that following the prototype of literaty utopias, which is Utopia (1516), by the English writer Thomas More, the cordel in focus presents a social criticism by the idealization of a diferent place from that of the writer historical and geographical contexts.