Tale
Contos tradicionais do Brasil
Not translated into English
Luís da Câmara Cascudo · 1946
Synopsis
One hundred tales from the Brazilian oral tradition, seventy-seven of them collected by the author himself, mostly in his home State, and twenty-three borrowed from other folklorists. They are arranged in twelve sections: tales of enchantment, the most numerous, exemplary tales, animal tales, jests, religious tales, etiological tales that explain the origin of things, the devil outwitted, riddles, and finally the cycle of death. Scholarly notes trace the stories back to their routes of arrival, Europe, Africa or Asia, and name the storytellers.
Context
Published in 1946, the collection answers the one Sílvio Romero had published in 1885: the author refuses to classify the tales by race, which he judges impossible. His preface links some of the stories to eastern sources and holds the Egyptian tale of the Two Brothers to be the oldest known, while most of the tales of enchantment seem to him to have come from Portugal, according to the study in the journal Palimpsesto. Among the storytellers, he gives a place to Luísa Freire, known as Bibi, an illiterate nurse who told him several of these stories.
Who it is for
A hundred short tales followed by scholarly notes, which can be read straight through or consulted by family.
Prizes and reception
Reissued in Brazil by Ediouro and then by Global, which was on the thirteenth edition in 2004; translated into French in 1978.
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