Leituras que persistem e constroem: o interesse de leitores por novels boys’ love e as consequentes construções de saberes

Abstract

One of the focuses of Information Science is understanding how individuals search for, find, consume and transform the information they interact with. In the field of literary reading, the theories of Aesthetics of Reception, proposed by authors Jauss and Iser, were used to understand how these literary scholars revolutionized their field in the 1970s with the idea that the success of a literary work consists of the production of meanings in its reader. This theory can also serve as an explanation for the theory that a literary work that produces knowledge is a work that has driven the appropriation of information by its reader. Based on these ideas about the interaction between subject and text, the production of meanings and the formation of new knowledge through reading, this study sought to understand the factors surrounding the phenomenon of boys' love novels in Brazil as a type of fiction of interest and a mechanism that facilitates the production of knowledge. To guide this research, the phenomenological method applied to Applied Social Sciences was used, due to its descriptive and observable nature based on the phenomenon as an experience of the subject's conscious perception. In other words, a scientific method that seeks to understand phenomena as they present themselves in an individual's consciousness. To this end, 9 interviews were selected from a group of 49 participants to try to answer how the subject became acquainted with boys' love novels, why they like to read them and what they have learned from them. The selections brought together 8 women and 1 man whose stories were separated into profiles that tell their consumption journey with the genre. The results were separated according to what are considered the pillars for understanding the effectiveness of reading: the context of production and consumption, the construction of meanings and the motivations for reading. As a result, it was noted that although there are not many official publications of boys' love novels in Brazil, it is in the clandestinity of unofficial translations promoted by fans on the internet that the reading numbers are sustained; and that readers are left at their mercy. Because it is an illegal activity, many translations published on websites and blogs are unavailable because they violate copyright law. When they cannot find translations in Portuguese, readers venture into research in other languages, some making an effort to learn them, others using translators to help them read. One way or another, fans of these novels do not seem to give up easily and the more they read, the more they describe a fantastic world full of references to various Asian cultures.