SEU LUNGA: a character in the transit between real life and cordel brochures

Résumé

This article discusses the story of Seu Lunga in the cordel “The stories of Seu Lunga: the most angry man in the world”, written by Abraão Batista, the first poet to publish about the character. We understand cordel as a narrative communicational phenomenon of everyday records. We observe, through analysis based on the social construction of reality, disputes over meanings in the cordel about Seu Lunga, constituting a character as believable as mythical, using narrative strategies of effects of realness. We conclude that, by becoming a character, through the meanings that his name summons, Seu Lunga acquires permanence in the collective memory.