Literatura para crianças e jovens no levante ou no poente: laços interculturais entre o Brasil e o Norte da África.

Abstract

In previous researches, we have directed our gaze to the importance of learning from literature in childhood, since, in this context, we recognize that literature for children and young people is an important way to expand the perspectives of these groups, especially through the ways of "francophone" literature. By recognizing this importance, we have identified that there is a predominance of works from European countries, among the literary works for children and young people in French language, making us realize the lack of (re)cognition of francophone writers around the world. Therefore, we turn our gaze to the literary production of the regions of the Machrek, which is an Arabic term for geographical and cultural notion meaning ‘Levant’; and of the Maghreb which means ‘West’. Both regions located in the north of the African continent. As the main goal of this paper, we intend to study the francophone literature from North Africa addressed to children and teenagers and try to answer: does the francophone literature from the regions of Maghreb and Machrek favour the breaking of clichés and stereotypes, promoting intercultural dialogues? As our specific objectives we established: a) Perform a survey of publications of Frenchspeaking African literary works, aimed at children and young people in specialized spaces; b) Identify works that present social historical elements that can promote intercultural dialogues between Brazil and the regions of the Maghreb and Machrek and c) Analyse a selected work from the corpus found, in order to present elements that may favour literary reading in the education of young readers within the scope of FLE (French as a foreign language) teaching. In the first chapter, we reflected on some plural approaches to language teaching and the importance of an intercultural perspective for literary reading. In the following chapters, we present an overview of the Maghreb and Machrek regions, highlighting the literary production identified, as well as a reading of two works from each region, seeking to establish intercultural ties with Brazil. In conclusion, we presented the autobiographical comic book L'Arabe du Futur (SATTOUF, 2014) seeking historicalgeographical links as paths to intercultural bridges. Our research is an extension of previous investigations executed with the support of the Institutional Scientific Initiation Scholarship Program (PIBIC) of the UFCG (Federal University of Campina Grande). Our analysis is anchored in the intercultural perspective of Candelier (2013), Abdallah – Pretceille and Porcher (2001), De Carlo (1998); literary reading for children and young people Reyes (2010), Vanthier (2006) and Chelebourg and Marcoin (2007); just to name a few of our bases. Among the results found in this research, we could restate that through interculturality, it is possible to have a sensitive look and open new horizons from the sharing of “francophone” literature that weaves an intertextual network from one language to another and from one culture to another, being fundamental as an instrument for opening up worlds and, therefore, essential in the integral education of children.