“They say that there were a lot of hanged people. And the skulls were stuck in poles”: literature and orality in the Carrancas Slave Revolt (1833)

ABSTRACT

This article aims at discussing the relationship between history, literature, and memory to demonstrate the importance of two sources that constructed the historiographical representation of the Carrancas Revolt (1833). Based on the analysis of the poem Levante by Oswald de Andrade, published in the work Pau Brasil in 1925, we attempt to establish a dialogue with research results on the oral memory of the insurrection. We explore the hypothesis that the poem is associated with a collective memory of the revolt, as well as the memory derived from the slaveholders’ perspective, both having persisted over the last centuries.

KEYWORDS:
History; Literature; Memory; Carrancas Revolt