A "lenda da farinha": relatos orais de uma mesma trama tecendo um grande texto da cultura em processo

Abstract

This paper aims at looking into questions raised by the oral narrative of mythical and legendary matter, in which the figure of king Encantado e Encoberto Dom Sebastião is present. Our target is to deal with the mechanisms of process involved in a legend that deems itself “real” so as to keep the livelihood of the mythical image of the young Portuguese monarch disappeared in 1578 in the sands of Morocco. Thus a game of endurance and updating of the collective memory takes place, in dialogue with the individual memory of each narrator. This way, a broad text of culture in process will be accomplished through times and places. The corpus of this paper is composed of two spoken versions of the same legend named “Lenda da Farinha”, which is ever-present in Maranhão, a state where the mythical image of Dom Sebastião is very much alive both in the local religious activities and in other cultural manifestations.