Memories tranquando in black literature: the African past in brazilian oral traditions

This paper discusses ancestral memory in Brazilian black literature, with the aim of identifying the extent to which oral traditions can help black writers to rewrite the history of African descent, based on historical elements from popular cultures. Based on A. Hampate Ba (2010), as well as Eric Hobsbawm (1997), this research reflects on the importance of oral traditions for the maintenance of collective memory, for the preservation of culture. Understood here according to the conception of Maurice Halbwahcs (1990), collective memory as a theoretical concept is mobilized in order to highlight the relationship between memory, literature and oral tradition. For, as pointed out by Paul Thompson (1992), the oral source allows to reveal hidden truths by taking off the layers of memory. Vanda Machado (2006) does not allow us to lie, according to her, in proverbs and sayings, in folk songs and popular festivals, the marks of Africanities resonate, because, having a culture of genesis in orality, the Africans brought here, transmitted the knowledge d 'Africa through expressions other than writing. Thus, for black writers, both official documents and popular culture constitute an important source of research on the reconstruction of the ancestral memory of black people in Brazil.