Poetics of incormormity: complaint and social criticism in the popular poetry of Leandro Gomes de Barros and Patativa do Assaré

• Grant number: 19/04894-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2019
• End date: May 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Brazilian Literature
• Principal Investigator: Francisco Claudio Alves Marques
• Grantee: Isabel Cristina Santos de Oliveira Rodrigues
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Patativa do Assaré and Leandro Gomes de Barros occupy equally important places at Brazil's Northeast artistic scenery. Although both of them are voice artisans and masters of inpromptu, they diverge in several aspects concerning the way they represent the cultural context from where they live and the surrounding social reality. This research aims to analyses the brochures of both poets as an instrument of denunciation and social criticism. In his circumstantial poems, Leandro denounces violence perpetrated by rural landlords and his ideas in the first decades of the Republic with indignation. Patativa, on the other hand, denounces the violence and the oppression that marked the "anos de chumbo" ("plumb years", meaning "hard years"), and heavily criticizes society and the official media that pretended not to notice the problem's gravity. However, each poet tends to represent his reality in a particular way.