Listas, literaturas e livros de cultura geral: uma análise

Abstract

This paper studies, through a brief bibliographic review, books of lists of general culture: materials that comprehensively deal with various subjects of science and knowledge fields such as philosophy, history, politics, sociology, among others, briefly explaining theories and events, and sometimes suggesting books. Such works include literature according to the recommendations of authors, books or texts, in order to also bring together the presented diversity of many fields of knowledge with aesthetic elements of literary works, renowned writers, characteristics and importance of the texts, etc.  Theoretically we are based on Robert Belknap (2004), for the work The List, to discuss the notion of ranking, which explains the presence, the selection process and the uses of works of the genre “list”, both in general themes and in the nominated literature.  The corpus is composed of contemporary publications from 1977 to 2017, whose organization lists classifications such as “Books that changed the world” or “Most important works for humanity”, of foreign origin, mainly Anglophone and Brazilian.  The paper understands, in the final discussions, that there is a strong commercial appeal by these works to elevate a constant individual acquisition of knowledge, a fact that does not open space for mediations or deepening of several knowledges.