Your offer holder day dates:
- Saturday 31 January
- Wednesday 25 February
- Saturday 14 March
Your subject session:
Introducing literary theory
The way you study English at university is more structured and theoretical compared to school/college level of study. In this interactive session, you’ll be introduced to the two major frameworks which enable us to understand English at a theoretical level: the extrinsic and the intrinsic. Whether your interest lies in language, literature, or creative writing, understanding Literary Theory is a crucial first step toward an advanced knowledge of your subject.
The double lives of picture books
This interactive lecture/seminar will introduce you to the history of children’s literature, with a specific focus on the development of books aimed at the very young. The taster session will also introduce you to critical theory, using the combination of words and images in picture books to explore the creation of meaning and irony.
Using a mostly interactive approach, this session will show that reading is not a passive but an active process, and that meaning is not only within the text. The session will raise awareness of the following:
- Texts are structured. Writers provide a host of lexical and grammatical clues to the intended structure.
- Texts are meaningful. Their meaning is more than the addition of the meanings of their component sentences.
- Talking about ‘comprehending’ texts only provides a partial picture; text meaning is more usefully seen as a product of our interpretation.
- Context is of central importance when interpreting any text type.
