RPG and literature at school: reading, affection and meaning negotiation

Abstract

Reading literary texts still seems to be a big challenge in basic education. Seeking to develop a methodology that could solve that problem, this paper presents a proposal based on the practice of reading and playing RPG and their ways of creating meanings. It presents RPG campaigns based on Machado de Assis’s short story “A cartomante” (“The fortune-teller”), carried out with high school students in Londrina, Brazil. By observing some matches, it was possible to see similarities between reading and playing as well as the role subjectivity plays in both of them. These findings are the basis for a reflection about the need to create appropriate tools to mediate the interaction between readers and literary texts, which should include sharing interpretations (Colomer) and reader and work affective approximation (Barthes). The research is also based on studies about reading (Jouve) and games (Caillois).