Descobrindo Minas de causos: narrativas orais e culturas do escrito em Belo Horizonte (1930 a 1960)

Abstract

The present research aimed at investigating oral narratives understood as educative processes that circulate in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, between the 1930s and the 1960s, in a context of increasingly legitimating of written cultures. The study adopted a non-dicthomous conception of the relationships between oral and written languages, revealing the interdependencies between the two dimensions of language. As sources for the study, we have used oral testimonies of subjects that lived in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the period studied, besides written documents, such as statistical data containing indicators of the presence of writ in the capital at that time; literary collections of popular short stories and periodical of that period (journals and magazines). From a theoretical and methodological point of view, we have grounded the investigation on Oral History Studies, Written Cultures, Content Analysis and Discourse Analysis. For carrying out the research, we initially traced the interviewees' profile, taking into consideration features such as subjectivity and the life experience of the subjects, since we consider language as a discursive practice that varies according to determined social contexts. Such considerations set up three segments of subjects related to the level proximity to written cultures, which guided part of the discussions and analyses. Then, we raised and analyzed the most circulating oral narratives of the period, the enunciation contexts and the motivation for telling and listening to stories. The results of the research pointed that there are variations between the practices of telling and listening to oral narratives in function of the segments of proximity to written cultures. Therefore, the corpus analysis evinced that the higher the level of proximity with written language, the more intense were the practices of orality lived along the subjects lifespan, i.e., the more they listened to and told oral narratives. Relatives, employees, drovers, aged people, teachers and the radio were the main agents for disseminating those narratives. Horror stories, legends, folkloric narratives, stories about popular types and the citys political episodes, wonderful and school tales, stories about the self and about others highlighted as the most circulating ones. The stories we considered a means for educating children, for socialization and entertainment for adults and for preserving personal memories and stories. The study helped us to understand that the circulation of oral narratives assumed specific configurations that move away from the image of the traditional story teller, of faire tales, of stories by the wood stove or the night shift, by associating those elements to vehicles of that time, such as the school and the radio. Altogether, the study revealed that, despite the increasing presence of written cultures in a urban society, as the one studied here, the oral narratives circulated in a intense way in the daily life of the capital.