Best sellers and literature teaching: editorial market, readers and school

Abstract

This paper problematizes the relation among mass culture best-sellers, as products of the editorial market, readers and schools. The focus is on theories and the reception that these works have achieved in literature classes and also on the connotations that the term best sellers covers - an expression from the editorial market, considered from the perspective of consumption. The paper is anchored on Pettit’s, Sodré’s, Candido’s, Cosson’s, Reimão’s, Calvino’s, and other authors’ ideas. These authors discuss literature as a practice of freedom, as an access to different levels and modality of culture; they also review the concept of canon and the implications for best sellers, considering readers’ choices, which go beyond what schools recommend as reading. In this sense, the consumption of many works is strongly influenced by the editorial market, and greater prominence is given to best sellers of mass culture, which is increasingly present in young readers’ reading repertoire. It is argued that moving from what students know to what they do not know can be an important starting point to teach literature at school.  Readers’ preferences, as well as viewing literary art from a political and democratic perspective should be in issue when the question is the literary reading at school.