Machado de Assis na sala de aula: contos

Abstract

Machado de Assis' literary legacy is commonly linked to the production of his novels. However, the writer was also extremely fruitful with regard to the production of poems, chronicles, plays, essays and, above all, short stories – the genre chosen for this work. The short stories offer a view of his trajectory and his aesthetic research, as well as his life as a writer: there are certain characteristics and style traits that allow these texts to be grouped according to the aspects identified in them, such as humor and irony. This work aims to present tools for teaching the reading of fiction based on Machado de Assis's short stories, in a way that allows students of High School to understand aspects such as irony, humor and social context, in order to stimulate the thought and training of young critical readers. A didactic sequence was developed based on four Machadian tales: “Um homem célebre”, “Cantiga de esponsais”, “O machete” and “O enfermeiro”. The didactic sequence contains nine modules, whose purpose was to offer a script for teachers of Portuguese Language and Literature to address the narratives through the lens of aspects such as social and historical context, narrative voices and, finally, humor and irony, developing critical thought in high school students.