Literary reading in middle school: the teacher’s identity in question

Abstract

This article aims to present some brief reflections on the literary reading in Middle School, considering the in-between place occupied by this schooling stage. On one hand, it is preceded by the common practices of the Elementary School, centered on the imaginary exercise and on the appeal to subjectivity, as well as on more playful activities. On other hand, it is followed by the distant, reflective and critical practices that are expected from young readers in High School. In this case, the subjective appropriation of the text seems to be neglected in the classroom and literary reading gives place to literary teaching. We question the prevalence of linguistic studies in attempts to approach the teacher to the literary text, since the aesthetic experience itself is ignored by theses theoretical approaches. Finally, we comment on some observations drawn from reader’s autobiographies written by a group of teachers from county and state public schools of Rio de Janeiro who are also graduate students of the Professional Master in Letters program at UFRJ. By doing so, we try to understand, based on the subjective process taken place in autobiographical writing, how the reader’s and the literature teacher’s identities are built in Elementary School.