“Medieval” Islands on the Amazonian Coast: Medieval Remains in the Amazonian Popular Culture and Culturally Interlarded Myths

Abstract

In which sense could we possibly catch a glimpse of “Medieval Islands” on the Amazonian coast? This paper aims at unravelling and explaining how some old medieval Portuguese mythical matter and mythemes do still exist and thrive in terms of popular culture on the “Island of Maranhão”, i.e. <i>Upaon Açu</i> or the “Isle of São Luís” until the present time, in comparison to some mythical elements to be found on the Island of Marajó, in Pará. Both Pará and Maranhão are Amazonian federal states of Brazil and this paper emphasizes the historical permanence of medieval mythemes, of course combined with other very complex and cross-cultural heritages pertaining to nowaday population of Maranhão, to which the Island of Marajó shall be a term of historical and archaeological comparison. We expect to arouse scholars’ interest to our subject in a Global History perspective, which takes into account the links and unexpected cultural traits of Middle Ages still thriving in Brazilian popular culture as the upshot of a long-term and complex cross-cultural process that has been taking place in American countries since the late 15th. century. Little attention has been paid to the role of medieval mythemes along this complex process and I should like to endeavour to fill this historiographic gap by proposing the present paper. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to highlight and discuss the evidence of a medieval past transposed to the Portuguese Amazon, whose legacy is up to our days a very plentiful popular culture in terms of medieval references, such as the phantom barks and “Mothers of Creeks”, as we pimpoint along the text. This essay is keen to address this polemic topic by drawing on some authors and theorists who, in our view, must be brought back to the proscenium of scientific discussion concerning Social Sciences. The first and main one is Luís da Câmara Cascudo, a major folklorist and researcher whom we should like to introduce to international academic readers. Hence, this little essay aims at wreaking new academic discussion on the formation and colonization of the Amazon in cross-cultural terms.