Brazilic Folklore in the Second Act of na Festa De São Lourenço, by Anchieta (1587): Critical-Interpretive and Historiographical Issues

Abstract

The article aims to discuss interpretative exegesis questions about the text of the play Na Festa de São Lourenço, from 1587, written by the missionary and humanist S. José de Anchieta (1534-1597), in the context of sixteenth-century Portuguese America. The work was staged in the indigenous community of São Lourenço in Niterói, still in the 16th century, and is one of the main records of intellectual production in the colonial period. Modernly, the author's text has been republished by Maria de Lourdes de Paula Martins, in an extensive volume with Poesias de Anchieta (ANCHIETA, 1989 [1954]), and by Armando Cardoso, in the edition of Monumenta Anchietana (ANCHIETA, 1977). Our critical interpretation will have the scope of resuming the analysis developed by Câmara Cascudo, in the work Antologia do Folclore Brasileiro (2002 [1944]), in which the interpreter cites the texts of Anchieta and chroniclers of the 16th century as a source for folklore studies in Brazil. We seek to problematize how folkloric interpretation approaches the exegesis method of the Textual Criticism discipline. Finally, in an interdisciplinary perspective with the discipline of Historiography of Linguistics, we will seek to show how Anchieta’s “linguistic thought” (SWIGGERS, 2013; 2019) was linked to the study of indigenous popular traditions in sixteenth-century Portuguese America, which we conceptualize as a colonial Brazilian folkcore.