FROM RELIGIOUS READING TO LITERARY READING

REFLECTIONS ON THE FORMATION OF READERS IN PORTUGUESE BETWEEN THE 16TH AND 18TH CENTURIES

Abstract

This article analyzes some of the ways in which the teaching of reading and the formation of readers in Portuguese, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, that is, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, are associated with the imperial expansion of the Lusitanian kingdom and the resulting colonization process, which promoted a linguistic policy articulated with a project to propagate the empire and the Christian faith, thus enabling the consolidation of the vernacular as an official language and, at the same time, the formation of a literary canon in Portuguese. Thus, it seeks to understand the historical conditions that made possible the emergence of the “subject” and, consequently, the advent of subjective reading. To this end, we used the compendia and legislation of the period as sources, as well as some theoretical assumptions related to the concepts of schooling (Vincent; Lahire; Thin, 2001), grammatization (Auroux, 1992) and coloniality (Quijano, 2007). It was concluded that, with the institutionalization of the teaching of literature and the advent of literary reading, in the 19th century, the formation of readers is already limited or restricted by a normativity that encloses the subjective and intellectual possibilities of reading experiences, circumscribing them to the canonical menu offered by educational institutions.