Poetry Reading and schooling: textbooks and the education of readers

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the approach to poetry presented by the textbook Contemporary Portuguese: dialogue, reflection and use (2017), the most selected, and consequently the most distributed textbook, in 2018 National Program for Textbooks and Didactic Materials (PNLD). Aiming to reflect about the place of lyric literacy in Brazilian classrooms, this article discusses the issues that involve the study of literary genres (especially “lyric”), textbooks, and the education of readers. The tentative panorama presented here is not original: schools perpetuate a traditional didactic approach to poetry. Although it is possible to detect a theoretical advance on the subject, this advance is still restricted to the academic field, not reaching schools. Moreover, if the new theoretical assumptions meet the school, what happens then is a “collage” of concepts and systematizations that do not help students’ to interact with literary texts. In the textbook here analyzed, therefore, there is no connection between literary theory and literary reading that could help in the education of poetry readers, especially with regard to the understanding of the "lyric" genre.

Keywords

• gêneros literários
• letramento lírico
• poesia
• livros didáticos