Facing the text. Some considerations about educational experience of literary fiction

This paper means to propose some analysis on how reading a literary fiction may become and educational experience. Starting from the point of view of the Philosophy of education and focusing on the main connections between literary work and inner-Self, these preliminary considerations refer to the idea that the search for individual shape can find in the narrative field a thoughtful instrument to understand the complexity of the relationship subject-world. Since the Bildungsroman model, the pedagogical role of literature has become increasingly fruitful, but especially in the late twentieth century, as it no longer had to make the main character a model to seek identification, Literature became the place of that representation of reality and thought capable of directly calling into question the beliefs, the doubts, the sensitivities of the reader, hence supporting a growing Self-awareness and a more disenchanted worldview. From the analysis of some of these self-reflective figures, therefore, new similarities emerge so as to make Literature an instrument to build the shape of each one’s personality.