Evil Temptation to Learn. Reflections on the Teaching of Reading and Literary Education

Abstract

From the words of Voltaire, the authors analyze rigorously the concept of reading and its various implications in the context of literary and reading education, as well as the dangers, contradictions and paradoxes that it infers. In this sense, current approaches on the teaching of contemporary literature are here reviewed concerning the formation of readers and questioning certain common practices and strategies in promoting readership. Likewise, different key concepts are analyzed such as the figure of the reader, the reading habits of the Spanish population and its main indicators as well as its contrast to other sectors, the emergence of digital books and its relation to the printed book, or reading literacy and literary competence.