"Pai contra Mãe", by Machado de Assis, theoretical-critical study about black people in brazilian literature

Abstract

The great challenge for literature teachers is to train literary readers. Achieving this goal requires planning and applying systematized teaching strategies that are possible in everyday school life. Another challenging issue is the introduction of classic texts that attract the attention of these young people. The aim of this article is therefore to present high school literature teachers with a reading strategy developed as part of the scientific initiation research, which leads students to reflect on the role of black people in contemporary Brazilian society, motivated by canonical literature.  So, we took Machado de Assis' short story, Pai contra Mãe, as a reference. It presents a plot that focuses on the situation of black people in Brazilian society and is analyzed using a theoretical-critical approach based on a 21st century perspective, combining studies of Narratology, Reception Aesthetics and Rildo Cosson's Reading Circles methodology. The strategy developed for reading the short story allows students to understand the present socio-cultural context, the aesthetic resources that generate meaning, motivating them to collectively construct new meanings arising from their experience of the world and of being a reader, and realizing the importance of the past in understanding the present.