Reading of the short story Viagem aos seios de Duília, by Aníbal Machado: a teaching proposal

ABSTRACT For a long period of time, teaching literature in the Brazil’s high school was restricted to the historicity of literary movements and biographies of considered known authors in the academic field, in a decontextualized and demotivating manner. Although the literature’s recognized, over the decades, as indispensable in the classroom, it is common to perceive the reality that literary texts reading took place in the background of school environments’, due to the teacher's lack of knowledge about how to teach literature and literary reading. In that context, studies and methodological proposals become relevant to make possible the formation of literature readers. Considering that, the target of the article is to present a reading activity proposal for the short story Viagem aos seios de Duília, by Aníbal Machado – Journey to Duília’s Breasts, as the literal translation – to be applied in a second-year of the high school classes. The proposal is based on the basic sequence model developed by Cosson (2016), on reflections by authors such as Aguiar & Bordini (1993) and Aguiar (1996) which includs methodological alternatives for reader’s development. We believe that this study can contribute to the teaching of literature in the schools, to recognize the importance of elements that promote the development of autonomous literary readers, motivating and expanding students’ horizons regarding the ways of reading texts and their perception of the world. KEYWORDS: Literature teaching; Basic sequence; Short stories reading; Readers' development.