O meu pé de laranja lima : do broto ao fruto. A recepção da obra de José Mauro de Vasconcelos por diferentes gerações

Abstract

The main aim of the present dissertation aim was verifying the reception effect ofthe book My sweet Orange Tree on a specific public, differenced by age, maturity, history of reading, and sex, thus evidencing, through the analysis of the data collected in the ethnographic survey, the acknowledgement of the book by a current public. One of the best known Brazilian literary books for children and adolescents was My Sweet Orange Tree, by José Mauro de Vasconcelos, an editorial success in Brazil, and soon published abroad, in many countries. However, there are few studies about the author, or his works. The corpus of the survey was twelve people, divided in six different groups. Some theories guided the analysis, as the Aesthetics of the Reception and the Sociology of Reading as well as the ethnographic survey performed with a distinguished collaborator public. The present dissertation analyzed the reception of the work My sweet orange tree by a current public, in order to verify if the book attained or surpassed the expectations horizons of the current reader about this book. After performing the survey, there was the raising of some questions on the receptivity of the book by the ones who read it for the first time, and by the ones who reread it. The results show that the horizon of expectations of the readers was broken, meanwhile the reading caused the identification with the character-hero, through the emotions. In the frame of adherences of the horizon of expectations, all the readers adhered to the book. From this pleasant identification the Katharsis is born: this means the reflection upon the book, when the reader transforms a subjective reading into a intersubjective reading, and mainly, is transformed by it (he or she is cured, in the Aristotle sense). The reading and the important transformations in the life of the readers showed the power of the plurality of meanings in the reception of the literature, dislocating the horizon of expectations, and attributing new meanings to their new aesthetics experience through the book My Sweet Orange Tree. The readers who read the book for the second time demonstrated the broadening of their horizons of expectations, and the maturation of their reading. Thus, we observe the rereading as a changing in the significance of the same reader, in a diachronic perspective, because the book makes possible the attribution of new meanings. Finally, through the interviews, we noticed that this book is still alive in its web of significance, that is, it still completes its communication with the reader through its reception.