Banditry and the national wilderness: God and the devil in the land of the sun and the cordel literature

Abstract

The Cordel literature refl ects the culture of the region it belongs to, that is the northeast of
Brazil. In the same way the fi lm by Glauber Rocha, Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol, also refers to
the same culture. This work considered a number of hypothesis in order to compare the differences
and the similarities among brochures which were written based on social banditry - known as cangaço
- and the Brazilian backlands, and the images produced by Glauber Rocha in his fi lm, where
the same subjects are discussed. The brochures used for the analysis are in the Central Library of the
State University of Londrina.
Keywords: Cordel Literature. New Cinema. Social banditry. Wilderness.