READINGS AND PRACTICES OF AN OBJECT CALLED BOOK

SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The article aims to present contributions from semiotics to reading practices in the school context, considering books as objects. For this, it mobilizes propositions brought by the approaches of Eric Landowski and Jacques Fontanille when discussing, from a phenomenological point of view, the sensitive and intelligible relationship that involves the production of meaning in relation to the objects of the natural world. It starts from the assumption that a still graphocentric approach insists on ignoring both the syncretic dimension of enunciation, focusing only on the verbal text and the apprehension of a narrative structure, and the understanding of material qualities, which make the book a body interacting with another body, that of the subject-reader. From this perspective, it analyzes a production of children's and youth literature, Veludo: historia de um thief, by Silvana D'Angelo and Antonio Marinoni, published by Zahar, in 2013. The sophisticated composition of an editorial project necessarily calls for the work of reading from the pre-textual elements, following the clues that make it possible to observe the work of the illustration and the way in which the theme of robbery crosses the verbal and the visual. The sensitive dimension is also summoned by the character, whose name evokes touch, at the same time that his special skills lead him to intensely perceive the particular smells of people and objects, in a eager project of searching for elements of memory.