Traditions and innovations in school literary education in Europe

The topic of the article is the main problems of the functioning of fiction in secondary school, the traditional interpretation of the educational function of literature for the European paradigm, the representation of the literary canon in the European school, the educational context of the concepts "literature"and " reader". Reading fiction at school remains not only at the center of European curricula, but also at the center of the entire cultural and socio-educational European discourse, and, above all, because of the importance of this subject in the process of forming the personality of the younger reader. In the document regulating the language policy in the European Union (Language Policy Division, 2009), fiction is considered as a factor contributing to the development of personality. Personality formation is a generally recognized function of reading literature, it contributes to the formation of moral attitudes and social values, the document says. A number of researchers call such views on literature moralistic (Witte, Maslowski Pike, etc.). Other educational scientists go further in assessing the moral impact of literature on the adolescent reader and consider it as a way of learning about religion and as support for the reader in accepting certain religious values (Iseghem, Collins). Lewis and Petrone connect the process of forming the identity of a teenage hero, reflected in a literary work, and the construction of the identity of a teenage reader. They note that teenage readers are more willing to read literature that reflects the stage of life at which they themselves are. The main function of literature focused on the reader - pleasure - is perhaps the most obvious in European pedagogy. Soetaert and Felski believe that literary education, first of all, should stimulate the pleasure of reading; the magical effect of fiction is its main purpose.