Literatura de Cordel – origens e perspectivas educacionais

Abstract

This work discusses about the use of the string book (cordel) in teaching-learning perspective at Elementary School I. Aiming to analyze the importance of the cordel in the learning process, we observe how this literature dialogues with the formative processes of children, youth and adults. In order to reflect on these processes, we resort to the theoretical contribution of authors such as Melo (1982), Cascudo (1984), Ferreiro and Teberosky (1999), Vygotsky (1994), Galvão (2000) and Soares (2016). We also resort to a structured interview applied to the poet Arievaldo Vianna, who informed us that was literate by his grandmother by means of string books. Therefore, this research argues that popular narrative poetry can be a didactic support to be used multidisciplinarily, approaching in a ludic way subjects of the school curriculum. Cordel is the popular narrative poetry that came to Brazil by the hand of the colonizers and was developed in the Northeast, having influenced in a remarkable way the culture of the region and thus contributing to the empowerment of the identity of our people. In its origin, popular literature was expressed by orality. But even when it started to be printed, it did not lose the link with orality. It was with this characteristic that this literature came to Brazil on board the caravels of the first Portuguese who arrived here. In Brazilian lands, popular narrative poetry has consolidated itself as a very important means of literacy in rural and urban areas. In this context, after discussing the didactic potential of popular works, with an emphasis on the string book, we began to analyze how these works can aid the teaching-learning process. Thus, focusing on elementary school, we suggest some techniques to help educators to explore the didactic potential of the cordel in order to promote learning in History, Geography, Mathematics, Portuguese and transversal themes.