Literature and ethical-aesthetic formation

a look at basic education

Abstract

This work presents an excerpt from a research in education that deals with literature from an
ethical-aesthetic perspective. The goal was to analyze the place that literature has occupied in the planning of
the Language Area, considering dimensions such as aesthetics, poetics and playfulness. The theoretical
references focused on literature and human development support an approach that sheds light on ensuring the
specificity of the literary works and their ethical and aesthetic potential. The methodology is qualitative and
the procedures involve a review of literature, educational documents and teaching plans. The study was based
on the view that literature provides a unique way of accessing cultures, knowledge, values and other
dimensions of the human world and, in this sense, is formative and self-formative, and is therefore relevant
for the comprehensive education of students. The analysis of school documents focused on the Portuguese
language in a municipal school in Balsas (Maranhão) focused on the second stage of elementary school and
the results indicate the lack of an ethical approach, the absence of the aesthetic and poetic perspective of the
work, as elements specific to literature. In this sense, it leaves to be desired regarding the principles indicated
in the normative frameworks of national and regional education. Finally, the study allows us to infer that
literature can be approached beyond didactic and pedagogical purposes, also as an opportunity for subjective
and intersubjective experience, to the extent that the complementarities between ethics and aesthetics are
considered in a horizon of ethical-aesthetic formation.