A liberdade vigiada : estudo sobre os modos de recepção da obra O Alquimista, de Paulo Coelho, pelos detentos da Penitenciária Estadual de Maringá

Abstract

At analysing the ways of reception of the book The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, through the prisoner's reading of the State Prison in Maringá, the intention is to show the discussion about the critical division between the concepts of mass literature and canonical literature is, at least, innocuous. The argument is that these two points must be understood relatively, not exclusively. Although some technical precepts accord that the comprehension of the literary artefact must be accepted only through the readings defended by the specialised criticism in literature, the understanding is that the literary reading of a "common reader" (without the theoretical-critical references that has supported the judgement of the value of some published works) has also its validity. This research's methodology was developed by the application of two questionnaires in the way of identifying, at first, the socio-economical level of the selected readers and, after that, their ways of reception of The Alchemist. The theoretical grounding of the problem was organized by the selection of theories and authors whose arguments defend the conception of literature without the division between popular and scholar (post-structuralist theory) and by the description of the ways as the Sociology of Reading and the Aesthetic of Reception deal to justify the importance of the (common) reader as part in the process of the literacy degree's classification of a literary work. The following procedure consisted of the comparison between the opinions of the specialised criticism about Paulo Coelho's work, the analysis of The Alchemist by the author of this research and the analysis of the questionnaires applied to the selected readers. The obtained results were satisfactory because they showed the reception of The Alchemist by the selected readers corroborated the initial purpose of this project: even with the specialised literary criticism resistance in relation to the Paulo Coelho's work, there are readers who like this kind of literature and, hence, they should not be reproached for that.