A realidade mágica do arquipélago de Maiaú: estudo de narrativas orais

Abstract

Currently, orality is put in a subordinate place, due to a supposed lack of scholarship. However, throughout Brazil, there are oral narratives of contact with the supernatural commonly associated with folklore, and there are those that tell particular experiences of their narrators with the unusual, whose structure and thematic content have similarities in both literatures — oral and written. It is justified, therefore, to seek oral forms analogous to what we understand by literature in literate or non-literate communities, in order to analyze them from the perspective of literary theory. The target site of this research is the Maiaú Archipelago, belonging to the municipality of Cururupu, located more than five hundred kilometers north of São Luís, Maranhão, since there are several personal accounts of its residents about contact with the supernatural. This element proves to be an important agent in the narrative plot, juxtaposing it to Magical Realism, by the way it departs from everyday life for the construction of a reality of magical events. Thus, this study points out the characteristics of Magical Realism in the oral narratives of the Maiaú Archipelago. To support this study, we used the work organized by Sônia Queiroz (2011) together with several authors on oral tradition and literary orality, concepts of Brazilian oral literature by Luís da Câmara Cascudo (2012), Frederico Fernandes (2013), Costa and Pereira (2020), among several others. About Magical Realism, we seek support in the contributions of Irlemar Chiampi (1980), Milton Rodrigues (2009), Ana Camarani (2014) and Francine Iegelski (2021). For this qualitative research, the exploratory methodology consisted of a semi-structured interview with the selected residents of the Archipelago, through the recording of oral narratives and, later, with their transcription and analysis. As a result of the research, it is possible to highlight the insertion of the supernatural in the oral literature produced in Maiaú, with traces of Magical Realism in the way in which the unusual event presents itself and takes place in the narrative and in the context of the community, metamorphosing the aspects of a literary genre written for oral tales with primacy and singularity.