Geice Peres Nunes e Carlos Nogueira: A Peleja de Inácio da Catingueira e Romano da Mãe d’Água

Abstract. – The article presents the celebrated peleja (verse exchange) between Inacio da Catingueira and Romano da Mae d’Agua in the Brazilian North-East. The polemic peleja de cordel (a kind of chapbook), which evokes a poetic contest that allegedly took place in 1874 or 1875 in Recife, is regarded as the first of a kind that forms one of the most important phases in Brazilian cordel literature. On the one side stands a slave poet and on the other a landowner; each aims to defend and to characterize the race and social class to which he belongs. The article aims to demonstrate the influence of scientific thinking in popular literature, particularly with regard to ethnic and cultural miscegenation. [Brazilian North-East, Paraiba, folk literature, cordel, Jose Alves Sobrinho, race, miscegenation]