Literary Readers’ Education: Possible Dialogues between Conceptions of the Bakhtin Circle and Textbook Activities

Abstract

This article summons the conceptions of the Bakhtin Circle to redesign literary reading activities proposed in Brazilian textbooks, making them more responsive to contemporary life. It is based on the concepts of dialogism and responsiveness and evokes such concepts to contribute to the perception of infertile use of the current activity model in the (literary) reader’s formation. Besides, it points out possibilities to the elaboration of activities open to the dialogue of students/readers’ experiences with literary texts as well as inviting to the expression of the students’ active responsive attitudes towards literary reading. The article analyzes an activity based on a Camonian sonnet, which is present in one of the textbooks approved by the National Book and Teaching Material Program (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático - PNLD) 2018, in an attempt to contribute to the unlearning of practices regarding the approach to literary reading in school. Finally, the same Camonian sonnet is used to elaborate a set of activities grounded on dialogism and responsiveness.