ABSTRACT
Our stories make our condition human. We need them to invite us to see the signifying meanings and hidden causes of things. How does it all connect? What does all this add up to? What are the big ideas behind the seductive details? When we read, someone else’s internal world transports us and can even become more important than our own. We know that stories engage us, but sense that they are telling us more than meets the eye; we know that words have meaning and we also know that if we could unwrap them, their meaning would amaze us and take us to the heart of things. How do we see beneath the surface, how do we ‘unwrap’ meaning? This chapter attempts to find some clues, some ways to achieve, and help students achieve, an understanding of what makes the reader hear, feel and see. It puts together Mayer’s and Lands’ idea of ‘threshold concepts’ and Aristotle’s discourse on the complexity and elusiveness of art and poetry, and considers how these ideas might spark ‘leaps of learning’. These ‘penny drop’ moments represent leaps of faith beyond comfort zones when students acquire new ways of seeing English as a subject and of their own work.
