A yellow hat and a red hood. A semiotic appraisal of Chico Buarque’s <i>Chapeuzinho Amarelo</i>

Abstract

In the 1970’s, Chico Buarque published the children’s book Chapeuzinho Amarelo – a parody of the fairy tale The Little Red Hood. This analysis tries to emphasize the intertextual structures underlying the two stories, showing in what ways elements of the narrative, themes and figures are borrowed from the classical text. In the traditional version of the brothers Grimm, the central theme is that of the transgression, but in the background we can also see the theme of maturation. This secondary theme is brought to the center in Chapeuzinho Amarelo. Linguistic, sound and visual resources of the expression plane will bring a symbolic aspect to the confrontation between Chapeuzinho Amarelo and the Wolf. To close the analysis, we investigate the pictures that compose the book. These pictures bring contributions to the meanings conveyed by the written text and reinforce the general interpretation given in this work. Keywords: Semi-Symbolism. Children’s Literature. Chico Buarque. Little Red Hood