This communication presents the results of the research that investigates the treatment given to the Literature content in Portuguese didactic books published between 1964 and 1984, during the Military Government in Brazil. The research aimed to analyze the manuals configuration at the time, identifying the official initiatives of material editing for High School students and the way that texts taught Literature. The research takes as object and main source the book series published in São Paulo at 1970 by Raul Moreira Lellis, titled “Português no Colégio” for the first and second grades and “Português no Colégio” for the third grade. These texts are representatives of a period production and allow us to see how Literature was studied by all the students in High School, since first until third grade. The research also proposes the articulation between an internal study of Lellis books and the questions that involved the didactic book’s edition at the time, beyond the questions relatives to the Portuguese language curriculums, because these aspects are very important to understand “Português no Colégio” as product and, at the same time, producer of editorial and school initiatives. The research’s results were organized in three ways: first, the content analysis by the authors treated by Lellis and how he puts the literary canon, after, an analysis of the form and materiality of the book and, in the end, the qualitative analysis of Lellis work, starting by a few documents founded and the comparison with the law and the actual Literature books.

The choice of the book based on the historical period that it was published is very important to the research because the results show us that the Literature teaching process during the domination and emancipation process at the Military Government (1964-1984), calls the attention in how the analyzed material is situated in the context of repression and institutional acts put during the period and the exerted force by censorship in issues of press and even education. The research also wants to situate the history and the didactic books politics, which presents differences and unclear points at their distribution and quality control, besides the lack of specification in Literature teaching, which was treated just as a complement of Portuguese language teaching.

What the works in Literature teaching in Brazil currently shows is the concern to provide to the student an interpretation and a contact with the literary text itself, differently from the Military period, which the biggest concern was offer to the student biographical information about the authors and fastening exercises, leaving the lecture of the literary text itself, in second plan.