Literary reading in a Brazilian Portuguese textbook: a dialogical approach

Abstract

One of the main objectives of Basic Education is to contribute to the development of literary readers. However, trails that bring us closer to this purpose are still challenging. In this article, we intend to discuss and reframe the notion of literary reading in order to problematize its practice in a textbook. We are theoretically based on The Bakhtin Circleand literature teaching researchers, such as Zilberman (2016) and Rezende (2013). The analysis will be based on the Dialogical Discourse Analysis methodological framework, and the analytical focus falls on the first chapter of the High School textbook Se liga na língua. The results suggest the existence of frictions between dialogical literary reading practices and traditional views on teaching literature. Above all, the lack of an approach to the aesthetic dimension is evident in the textbook, as the activities seem to ignore the processes of interpenetration, i.e., the act of experiencing other realities, objectifying the experience and perceiving the transfiguration of reality through reading.