Literature and additional language teaching: discourses and practices in tension

Abstract

The central objective of this article is to discuss the different forms of tension, in the spheres of academic discourse and didactic discourse, of the canonical pattern of reading and reception of foreign literatures, historically based on the ideology of nationalism and the monolingual paradigm. Such tension crosses not only the modes of reading and theoretical-analytical approaches in literature studies, but also the forms of didactic mediation of literary texts in additional languages. The corpus analyzed here is composed of theses and dissertations defended in graduate programs in the state of Rio de Janeiro in recent years and textbooks approved in PNLD. The results of the research indicate a tense relationship between different gestures of interpretation and mediation practices around the literary, sometimes more focused on a policy of closure of the senses – based on reading protocols previously established in the foreign linguistic-literary fields –, sometimes more open to the plurality of voices, meanings and modes of critical and pedagogical appropriation.