Embaraços emancipativos entre fluxos da consciência, conflitos cognitivos e perspectivas textuais em tema e horizonte

Abstract

The Theory of Aesthetic Response and Literary Anthropology, formulated by the German literary critic Wolfgang Iser, emerged from the need to shift away from immanent theoretical constructs and to place the reader in an active subject position during the act of reading and meaning-making of literary texts. In light of this, the present study is guided by the following research question: do fictional narratives that employ stream of consciousness hinder the perception of the dynamic structure of theme and horizon, the construction of meaning, and amplify the reader’s subsequent emancipation? Based on this, the reader-researcher formulated the hypothesis that literary narratives with an intense use of stream of consciousness may hinder the perception of the structure of theme and horizon, the construction of meaning, and the reader's emancipation, drawing from her aesthetic experience with the novels Beloved (2018) by Toni Morrison and Os íntimos (2010) by Inês Pedrosa. To this end, the Aesthetic Experience Mapping (MAPEE), as defined by Santos and Costa (2020), was employed as a method for describing the metacognitive procedures involved in the reading act of a real reader—in this case, the reader-researcher’s experience with the aforementioned novels. Thus, in order to investigate the proposed hypothesis, the objectives established were to carry out the Aesthetic Experience Mapping of the reader-researcher for each novel and subsequently compare these mappings with a focus on the perception of the dynamic structure of theme and horizon, meaning construction, and the cognitive and affective emancipation of the reader-researcher. Based on the comparative analysis of the two mappings, it was observed that narratives characterized by an intense use of stream of consciousness hinder the perception of the structure of theme and horizon, leading to difficulties in discerning the positions assumed by textual perspectives, the reliability of the information provided by each point of view, the distinction between events related to chronological and psychological time, and the mental visualization of described scenes. It was thus concluded that the literary technique of stream of consciousness may function as a moderately discrepant knowledge object in the process of textual apprehension. Therefore, this research is considered to have the potential to offer valuable insights for educators regarding the teaching of literary reading, since narratives similar to the corpora analyzed herein may produce similar effects on students, especially those in upper secondary education who engage with texts featuring the aforementioned characteristics.