Cordel Literature

Cordel literature, literatura de cordel, is a genre of inexpensively printed Brazilian booklets and pamphlets containing folk novels, poems and songs, most closely associated with the country's Northeast, in states such as Pernambuco, Paraiba and Ceara. Its name comes from the Portuguese word for string or rope, cordel, since vendors traditionally displayed the booklets hung from strings for sale in street markets. The pamphlets are typically printed in black and white in quarto format with woodcut illustrations, composed in stanzas of ten, eight or six verses, and their authors, called cordelistas, traditionally recited the verses in a melodious, cadenced way to a musical instrument to attract buyers. The genre descends from the sixteenth-century Portuguese papel volante tradition, covers subjects ranging from instruction to political commentary, and is described as one of the least altered continuations of the Western tradition of popular literature.