A leitura literária no livro didático: limitações e potencialidades na formação de professores

The main aim of this article, whose object of study is the textbook, is to investigate the approach to literary texts in the ‘educator’s manual’ and how its textual composition favours the formation of the reader. To this end, we initially analysed the paratextual elements, the presence of literary genres, the class sessions aimed at reading and analysing the text, relating them to the teaching guidelines in the teacher’s manual. In addition to these aspects, some questions were raised about the National Reading Plan for Youth and Adult Education, the programme that enabled and approved the textbook, the subject of this research, which is adopted in all public schools in Brazil. In line with these paradigms, the textbook was analysed from the perspective of Reception Theory (Jauss, 2004), with the aim of verifying the place of the reader in the proposed literary reading activities. The methodological option was qualitative, exploratory research, which highlights the concept of “Literature” present in the textbook and the process of constitution of the literary text based on the notion of reception, in which the reader must be considered the primary element. This study has allowed us to conclude that the “educator’s manual” is an important tool in teacher training and that the literary texts contained in the textbook promote the creation of reading habits and the formation of readers who are able to experience the aesthetic and artistic pleasure of literary works.