Intertexts of Romeo and Juliet in northeastern leaflets

Abstract

Adaptations are a long-lived phenomenon that dates back to ancient Greece, when poets began the practice of re-reading myths, with the freedom to modify them and introduce innovations. Similarly, Northeastern poets, by adapting canonical narratives to the popular verses of the leaflets, assumed the role of “translators” of a literary tradition that is now written in a language closer to the people. Thus, this article discusses the presence of the Romeo and Juliet intertext in northeastern leaflets, incorporating adaptations from the source texts. Reading the texts establishes a comparison with the intertexts of this forbidden love in the cordel booklets of João Martins de Athayde, Maria Ilza Bezerra, Sebastião Marinho and Stélio Torquato Lima, based on the ideas of Abreu (2004), Hutcheon (2013), Kristeva (2005), Rougemont (1988), among others. An evaluation of the construction of the plot of Romeo and Juliet in the literary tradition is made, with a view to realizing in the adaptations for the Northeastern flyers, their divergences and similarities, understanding that the adaptations are not copies, but function as distinct productions, assuming important social functions in the context of the target culture, mainly that of socializing a universal text for the local culture.