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The Cordel Pandemic: The Daily Life of Students From the Interior of Paraíba,
Brazil Told in Verse

Chapter · September 2022

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-3369-0

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Chapter 25
The Cordel Pandemic:
The Daily Life of Students From the
Interior of Paraíba, Brazil Told in Verse

Filomena Maria Moita

Universidade Estadual da Paraiba, Brazil

Leandro Mário Lucas

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9627-4951
Universidade Estadual da Paraiba, Brazil

ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic established a transmutation, which, although initially temporary in appearance,
produced dramatic changes in the secular way of teaching and learning in methodologies and resources. It
also caused profound social, emotional, and educational impacts on the academic community in general.
From this perspective, in this chapter, the authors aim to identify the impacts caused by the pandemic
on daily life and revealed by students in their storytelling in verse, more specifically, in cordel. For this,
they used as methodology the assumptions of content analysis, in the expectation of having an in-depth
understanding of the content presented by the students and making inferences, in order to achieve the
intended purpose. As a result, they found in the verses impacts associated with three categories of daily
life, which they created from the data processing—sanitary, personal, and social—and they found that
cordel literature, by the very essence of capturing the images of life as it is, proved to be an adequate
way to capture the students’ voices about the topic in question.

INTRODUCTION

The Covid-19 pandemic established a transmutation, which, although initially temporary in appearance,
produced dramatic changes in the secular way of teaching and learning, in methodologies and resources,
as well as caused profound social, emotional, and educational impacts on the academic community in
general. As a result, teachers and students undewent an abrupt adaptation to a remote teaching process,
or, in some cases, to a hybrid-mediated one via Digital Technologies (DT).
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-3369-0.ch025

Copyright © 2022, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
 
The Cordel Pandemic

In this context, there were many challenges faced by the school community because of the adapta-
tions imposed by remote teaching. However, studies that highlight the voices of students are still scarce,
silenced, or do not give due emphasis to the main actors in education, whether in times of pandemic or not.
It was in the quest to fill this gap by focusing on capturing the “everyday lives” of students, during the
most critical phase of the pandemic and in this moment of returning to hybrid classes, that the chapter
we entitled The Cordel Pandemic: The Daily Life of Students from the Interior of Paraíba - Brazil Told
in Verse is structured. For this, we asked the students in the 3rd grade of High School from a full-time
public school in the interior of Paraíba to produce cordéis about the Covid-19 pandemic.
Regarding the structure of this text, it is composed of an introduction, the theoretical framework,
which briefly discusses the pandemic and its impacts on teaching, Cordel Literature and the assump-
tions of content analysis, which it is based on Bardin’s Theory (1977). There is also a section dedicated
to methodology and another to the processing of results, inferences and interpretations, in addition to
our final reflections.
From this perspective, we seek an answer to the following research question: how was the pandemic
and its impacts on our daily life revealed by students in the verses of their cordéis? Thus, this text aims to
identify the impacts caused by the pandemic on daily life revealed by students in their storytelling in verse.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In this section, we present the theoretical framework that supported our study, which is composed of the
following items: some aspects of the pandemic and its impacts on Remote Learning; Cordel Literature;
and Content Analysis, which is based on the assumptions of Bardin’s Theory (1977). 1,2

The Pandemic and its Impacts on Remote Learning

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about many changes in the traditional ways in which people live,
are, and relate to each other. Although the transformations it caused took many forms, in general, they
happened in order to transform the way people do their daily activities in person, in a remote way, and
its variations, which include totally synchronous or asynchronous forms, as well as the hybridization of
tasks, partly done online through digital technologies (DT).
In this scenario, “perhaps because it is an eminently social act, education was one of the most af-
fected and disfigured segments of its traditional ways of materialization” (Double blind review), which
motivated many studies on Remote Learning and its implications. in education and reflections on its
possible impacts in the post-pandemic period.
For Kuklinski and Cobo (2020), the education that had to be implemented in the pandemic period
redesigned the traditional face-to-face educational model towards virtuality, and actors and educational
institutions resistant to the use of DT had to appropriate digital culture. This movement, in the view of
these authors, forces the most resistant people to take ownership of technologies much more so that they
can carry out remote learning experiences, becoming a central aspect for teacher training processes,
which represents a great opportunity for teachers to become designers of learning experiences and stop
being mere disseminators of content.
Still on the pandemic, Arruda (2020, p. 257) asserts that this moment we are experiencing is a historic
milestone for education “because it generated the unprecedented situation of 90% of the student popula-

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The Cordel Pandemic

We come to the end of this article with an invitation to other researchers to engage in new studies,
since, even though cordel is a pedagogical resource of unique potential and richness, the research revealed
a lack of publications at different educational levels, both nationally and internationally. This points to
the emergence of research and publications that give visibility and importance to the contribution of
knowledge and popular language in general, as it happens with scientific knowledge and language.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To the authors of the cordéis The (un)godly pandemic, the Pandemic in cordel, The pain that makes you
stronger and Here I am, identified here respectively by the nicknames Elinha, Anne, Nya and Emy, we
express our sincere gratitude to their important contribution since, without them, this research would
not be possible.

REFERENCES

Arruda, E. P. (2020). Emergency Remote Education elements to Brazilian public education policies dur-
ing Covid-19 [Educação remota emergencial: elementos para políticas públicas na educação brasileira
em tempos de Covid-19]. Distance Learning Journal, 7(1), 257-275.
Assaré, P. D. (1978). Sing there that I sing here [Canta aí que eu canto aqui]. Voices.
Bandeira, M. L. B. (2020, Novembro 19). Cordelista Day: who was Leandro Gomes de Barros? [Dia
do Cordelista: quem foi Leandro Gomes de Barros?]. Itaú Cultural. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from
https://www.itaucultural.org.br/secoes/entrevista/cordelista-leandro-gomes-barros
Bardin, L. (1977). Content Analysis [Análise de conteúdo]. Lisbon: Editions 70.
Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (1994). Qualitative Investigation in Education: an introduction to the theory and
methods [Investigação qualitativa em educação: uma introdução à teoria e aos métodos]. Porto Publisher.
Cani, J. B., Sandrini, E. G. C., Soares, G. M., & Scalzer, K. (2020). Education and Covid-19: The art of
reinventing the school by mediating learning “primarily” through DITC [Educação e covid-19: a arte de
reinventar a escola mediando a aprendizagem “prioritariamente” pelas TDIC]. IFES Science Journal,
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de Souza, L. R. D. S., & Passos, O. V. D. O. A. (2018). Cordel Literature: A pedagogical too [Literatura
De Cordel: Um recurso pedagógico]. FASETE Scientific Journal, 75.
Fonseca, F. V. L., & Fonsêca, K. S. B. (2009). Contributions from Cordel Literature to Cartography teach-
ing [Contribuições da Literatura de Cordel para o ensino de Cartografia]. Geography, 17(2), 123–132.

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Hodges, C.B., Moore, S., Lockee, B.B., Trust, T., & Bond, M.A. (2020). The difference between emer-
gency remote teaching and online learning. Academic Press.
Kuklinski, H. P., & Cobo, C. (2020). Expanding the university beyond emergency remote teaching:
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outliersschool.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Expandir_la_universidad.pdf
Lima, J. M., de Sousa, J. M., & Germano, U. M. G. (2011). Cordel Literature as a means of science
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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Abestada: A silly person, a goof.

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Cordel: Literary genre of Portuguese origin, which was established in the Northeast Region of Brazil
and assumed its own characteristics associated with the Northeastern context. It is characterized by an
informal and popular language. Initially, it was exposed in leaflets hanging on ropes or similar objects,
whose specificity gave rise to the term Cordel Literature.
Cordelista: A person who writes cordéis.
Martelo Agalopado: Kind of cordel that has as its main characteristic a structure in which the stanzas
are composed of ten lines containing ten poetic syllables, having the stress falling on the third, sixth and
tenth poetic syllables.
Galope à Beira-Mar: Kind of cordel that has as its main characteristic a structure in which the stan-
zas are composed of ten lines containing eleven poetic syllables, having the stress falling on the second,
fifth, eighth and eleventh poetic syllables; plus, the last stanza finishes with the word “mar.”
Oxe: Abbreviation of Oxente, which conveys the idea of astonishment, surprise, admiration, or fright.
Repentista: Term associated with the expression de repente, which means “unforeseen,” “unexpected,”
and “sudden.” It referes to singers who make verses and songs in the form of improvisation, performing
alone or challenging another singer.
Vixe: Although its meaning varies according to the context in which it is being used, it generally de-
notes surprise or fright, which can sometimes be replaced by the expression Virgem Maria (Virgin Mary).

ENDNOTES
1
This is one of the most comprehensive websites about Cordel Literature in the world. It has a col-
lection of approximately 9,000 cordel leaflets, all available for online consultation, by index, author,
title, subject, place of publication, publisher/typography and date. Of this set, around 2,340 leaflets
are available in digital versions, with their original and variant versions. Available at: <http://antigo.
casaruibarbosa.gov.br/cordel/acervo.html>. Accessed on 13 Oct. of 2021.
2
Availbale at: <https://www.dicio.com.br/literatura/>. Accessed on 31 Jan. of 2022.
3
Available at: < http://acorda.net.br/estrutura-do-cordelprojetoacorda/ >. Accessed on 20 Jan. of
2022.
4
As mentioned before, the names of the authors of the cordéis are fictitious.
5v
Available at: <https://www.wordclouds.com/>. Accessed on 28 Jan. 2022.

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