From mass culture best sellers to literary canon: didatic sequence as a possibility

Abstract

The teaching of reading and, more specifically, of literary reading in the school context, has been discussed largely, presently focused on the new preferences by the students in contrast with the primacy of the canonical literature, historically well valued in school. Mass culture best sellers occupy an increasingly large locus in reading activities by young readers, while in contrast the imposition of the literary canon many times creates frustrations on reader’s expectations. As an attempt to to overcome such divide, we propose a convergence between literary canon and mass culture bestsellers. We selected the novels Me before you by Jojo Moyes and Lucíola by José de Alencar, about which we made two didactic sequences. Therefore, we try to discuss how reading of bestsellers may contribute to the insertion of canonical works in the school and the criticism formation of the reader. As theoretical support, we used the postulations by Barthes (1987), Lajolo and Zilberman (2009), Cosson (2015). With this essay, we want to give a new view of readings outside the literary canon in school.