Literature into play: RPG as a methodological alternative in the teaching of literary reading

Abstract

This study discusses the use of Role Playing Game (RPG) as a methodological alternative in the teaching of literary reading in the final years of Basic Education. For that, the research applies an RPG developed from the short story “The Fortune Teller,” by Machado de Assis, to students in the ninth grade of a state public school. It is based, fundamentally, on the discussions of Jouve (2002), for whom literary reading is similar to a game and the reader must be considered in its entirety; of Colomer (2009), which highlights the value of shared reading in the formation of the reader; and in the ideas proposed by Barthes (2004), that the reader, in addition to being a complex entity, is a character in the works he reads. The concepts related to the game are supported, mainly, by Huizinga (2000) and Caillois (1990). This path provided us with valuable reflections on how literature has been treated in school and the importance of a methodology in teaching reading, one that is attentive to the needs of “real readers” (JOUVE, 2002), often coming from spaces unrelated to literary circles

Keywords

• literature teaching
• rpg
• reader training