The theme of migration in the poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto

Abstract

In this essay, I bring out some fidings of my doctoral research done at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) from 2000 to 2006, which ended up with the thesis called Northeastern migrants in Brazilian Literature. In addition, I try to add more information recently produced. At the time, I studied the poem Morte e vida Severina: auto de natal pernambucano by João Cabral de Melo Neto. In my doctoral thesis, I take as a premise the idea that northeastern migrants appear in literature as objects and little by little, they take their place as protagonists in the narrations of their own stories. In this work of João Cabral, the migrant is part of the relation cult narrator / illiterate character that reappears at the poem form/content. For this communication, I intent to show some of the outcomes of the investigation motivated by how this relation is present at the poem composition.