Relembrando-A Velha Literatura de Cordel e a Voz dos Poetas

About the Book

"Relembrando-A Velha Literatura de Cordel e a Voz dos Poetas" really contains three important studies on the "cordel": 1) the revision and translation of Curran's PhD dissertation from 1968; 2) the augmentation of one of the chapters of the dissertation, treating Brazil's best known and pioneering poet Leandro Gomes de Barros; 3) the publication of a now historic series of interviews with forty "cordel" poets and publishers in the late 1970s. Curran dedicates much time and energy to this endeavor because he believes the researches were little known in their original form, and more importantly, with the passage of time and the evolution of the "cordel" and Brazil in general, they now remain as historic documents in Brazil's national cultural history.

About the Author

Mark J. Curran is a retired professor from Arizona State University where he taught Spanish and Portuguese Languages and their respective cultures from 1968 to 2011. His research specialty was Brazil, and he made more than twenty trips to that country to collect Brazil's folk-popular poetry, the"Literatura de Cordel," and study its relationship to Brazilian erudite literature and history. Some twenty-five articles in research journals and now fourteen books published in Brazil, the United States and Spain are the results of this endeavor. In retirement Curran has written six additional titles on Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Portugal and Spain, subjects from the civilization courses taught at ASU. Two autobiographical titles complete the list: "The Farm" and "Coming of Age with the Jesuits."