Natalia Hristova
Sofia University
https://doi.org/10.53656/bel2024-6s-4N
Must read, must read…
But what if instead of demanding it, the teacher suddenly decided
to share his own joy of reading?
Радост от четенето? Това пък какво е?
“The Rights of the Reader”, Daniel Pennac
Abstract. This paper focuses on the displacement of students' subjective reading
experience that has occurred in the last few decades as a result of the dominance of
text-centered analytical literary approaches in school education. In the context of
today's alarming disengagement from reading among young people, it makes the
case for both overcoming the monopoly of analytical approaches and rehabilitating
the inspirational potential of reading literary texts in the classroom. In order to
awaken young people's interest in literature and reconcile them to reading, the
teacher should at some point undertake the risky enterprise of revealing himself as
a reader to his students. For it is through our own passion and enthusiasm that we
can achieve that contagious effect through which literature reaches young people. In
this way, it seems to us, we would also have more chances to counteract the outflow
of reading, to befriend today's young people with books and to show them, as Tz.
Todorov, that the great texts of the past speak for them, that they give meaning to
their inner lives and help them to live better.
Keywords: analytical reading; reader's rights; subjective reading experience; reading aloud; reading pleasure
