Clássicos do terror como proposta de letramento literário: Machado e Stevenson em sala de aula

Abstract

According to the official documents that guide the pedagogical practices in the basic school system, the teaching of literature must be meaningful and enhance the use of reading and writing, making the literary experience a learning which enables reflection, critical and intellectual growth, that result from aesthetic experience. Given this assumption, the present study aims to highlight the importance of reading classical opus, showing its indispensability as a cultural heritage that must integrate the repertoire of learners; emphasize the immortality of Machado de Assis’s and Stevenson’s works, defending the importance to previlege the synchronic approach of the literary text and not only the chronological dimension, which limits the text to a merely historiographical vision. Therefore, a didactic proposal has been prepared for the second year of high school, which is based on Machado's tale The Secret Cause (1886) and the novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, classics horror. As theoretical base the concepts of Rildo Cosson were used, which discuss the teaching of literature, the importance of selecting texts and his proposed sequences: the basic and the expanded; Italo Calvino, who defends the immortality of classical works; Antonio Candido, who emphasizes the humanizing role of literature as inalienable and incompressible rights, as well as Leyla Perrone-Moisés, for her, the canon is unparalleled well, what should be offered to students, regardless of social class or challenges that could arise in the reading route. As methodology, an action research of qualitative and bibliographical nature was developed. Finally, the taken actions show that the teaching of literature should cover the classics, and that the expanded sequence represents an opportunity to make the canon a practical reality and not just a recommendation that is not effective, in fact, in the Portuguese lessons.