Brazilian Cordel Verses

Brazilian Cordel: Counting Verses in Popular Northeastern Poetry

Brazilian cordel is a popular oral-poetic tradition from the Northeast. Its stanzas are built from six or seven heptasyllabic verses, each carrying seven metric syllables. Counting the total is straightforward, since total = stanzas × verses_per_stanza. So a sextilha cordel running 30 stanzas comes to 30 × 6 = 180 verses, and a septilha of the same length lands at 210.

Sextilhas usually follow the ABCBDB rhyme scheme, while septilhas and decasyllabic forms lean on ABBAACCDDC or ABABCC variants. The poems came out on cheap folhetos hung from strings at fairs all through the 20th century, in states like Pernambuco, Paraíba and Ceará (cordel literally means "string"). In 2018, IPHAN registered the form as Brazilian intangible cultural heritage. Cordelistas such as J. Borges (PE) and Patativa do Assaré (CE) keep it alive, and the ABLC (Academia Brasileira de Literatura de Cordel) works to preserve and promote the genre.

Applications

Cordelistas use it to plan folheto length, since those booklets tend to run 8, 16 or 32 pages. It also helps literature students picking apart oral poetic structures, publishers working out page counts, and teachers covering Brazilian regional literature in the classroom.

FAQ

What is a heptasyllabic verse? A verse with seven poetic (metric) syllables, counted up to the last stressed syllable. It's the standard meter of cordel and of Portuguese popular poetry, where it's known as redondilha maior.

Why 6 or 7 verses per stanza? The sextilha (6) is the most popular cordel form. You'll also find the septilha (7) and decasyllabic forms (10 verses, called martelo agalopado), which show up often in cantoria de viola and challenge poetry.

Who is J. Borges? José Francisco Borges (1935) is a cordelista and xylographer from Bezerros-PE, and one of the cordel artists best known abroad. His woodcut prints illustrate hundreds of folhetos.