Anglo-American Literature

As per the Dublin descriptors, students, at the end of the course, will demonstrate:

Knowledge (contents)

Knowledge of texts (in the original language), contexts (historical, geographical, literary, cultural) and representative authors of North-American literature in English (XVII-XXI century)

Know-How (skills)

Recognition and use of text types and literary genres. Critical reading (textual / contextual analysis) of representative texts of Anglo-American literature in English.

Learning to learn and to communicate

Ability to learn while attending the course and actively studying; overall ability to communicate contents and acquired skills with clarity and autonomy of judgment.

English language A2 level. Basic knowledge of analysis of the literary text; basic knowledge of English metrics and prosody, in the absence of which, see ► Additional readings (optional) in the section “Reference texts”.

Students who cannot or do not intend to attend classes are invited to contact the teacher before the start of classes to agree on a supplementary study program.

Free

Module A

Diachronic, diatopic and thematic maps of American literature. Introduction
to the analysis of the literary text.

Module B

The urban poetry and prose of the African-American ghetto, of the immigration districts, of the artistic and literary communities.

Module A

• J. Frow, Genre, New York, Routledge, 2005 (pp. 1-155).

• One manual

to be chosen, and used as a reference book, among the following: P. Lauter (ed.), A Companion to American Literature and Culture, Hobboken, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010; o: R. Gray, A History of American Literature, Blackwell, Malden and Oxford 2004; o: G. Fink, Storia della letteratura americana, Milano, Rizzoli, 2013; o D. Campbell, Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events: Pre-1620 to 1920. http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/

• Sixteen (16) texts chosen from:

(a) one of the following anthologies:

P. Lauter (gen. Ed.), The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Lexington, D.C. Heath & Co. (any edition); o: N. Baym et alii, (eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, New York, W. W. Norton & Co. (any edition); o: D. McQuade et alii (eds.), The Harper American Literature, New York, HarperCollins (any edition); or

(b) (as an alternative or in addition to the above) from the following sites:

* Archive.org https://archive.org/

* Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/

* Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

* Penn Sound https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/

* The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore https://www.eapoe.org/index.htm

* The Web of American Transcendentalism https://transcendentalism.tamu.edu/

• Two (2) classics of American Literature

in any critical edition, chosen from the following list:

S. Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1791); B. Franklin, Autobiography (1793); R. Tyler, The Algerine Captive (1796); Ch. Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798); W. Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1820); J.F. Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826); N. Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales (1839); E.A. Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque (1840); F. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845); M. Fuller, Memoirs (1852); W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855); H. Melville, The Piazza Tales (1856); H, Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861); E. Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888); E. Dickinson, Selected Poems (1890); K. Chopin, At Fault (1890); Mark Twain, The American Claimant (1892); S. Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895); J. London, The Call of the Wild (1903); E. Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920); F.S. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920); T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922); W. Stevens, Harmonium (1923); J. Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925); W. Cather, The Professor’s House (1925); N. Larsen, Passing (1929); W. Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929); G. Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933); E. Hemingway, Winner Take Nothing (1933); D. Barnes, Nightwood (1936); J. Fante, The Road to Los Angeles (1936); C. McCullers, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1940); V. Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941); H.D., Trilogy (1944); S. Bellow, Dangling Man (1944); T. Capote, The Grass Harp (1951); R. Ellison, Invisible Man (1952); A. Miller, The Crucible (1952); T. Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955); J. Barth, The Floating Opera (1956); E. O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956); Ph. K. Dick, Eye in the Sky (1957); J. Kerouac, On the Road (1957); W. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959); G. Brooks, Selected Poems (1963); A. Sexton, Selected Poems (1964); J. Baldwin, Tell me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968); N.S. Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968); J. Kosinski, Being There (1970); R. Brautigan, The Abortion (1971); T. Rivera, ...y no se lo tragó la tierra/...And the Earth Did Not Part (1971); G. Sorrentino, Splendide Hotel (1973); W. Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974); J. Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975); L.M. Silko, Ceremony (1977); S. Plath, The Collected Poems (1981); R. Coover, Spanking the Maid (1982); E. Bishop, Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983); R. Carver, Cathedral (1983); R. Creeley, Collected Poems, 1945-1975 (1983); D. Mamet, Glengarry Glenn Ross (1983); S. Shepard, Fool for Love (1983); S. Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1983); W. Gibson, Neuromancer (1984); G. Paley, Later the Same Day (1985); T. Morrison, Beloved (1987); J. Ellroy, My Dark Places (1996); D. DeLillo, Underworld (1997); R. Hinojosa-Smith, Ask a Policeman (1998); J. Eugenides, Middlesex (2002); D.F. Wallace, Oblivion (2004); J.S. Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005); H. Mathews, My Life in CIA (2005); Th. Pynchon, Inherent Vice (2009); J. Frenzen, Purity (2015); E. Castillo, America is not the Heart (2018).

Module B

Urban Literature: American Cities in Black and White

1) Must-read:

E.A. Poe. “The Man of the Crowd” (1840); W. Whitman. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, part 1 (1856); T.S. Eliot. “The Burial of the Dead”, section I of The Waste Land (1921); A. Baraka, “Incident”; C. Bolt. “The American City. Nightmare, Dream, or Irreducible Paradox?”. In G. Clarke (ed.). The American City. Literary and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Vision Press, 1988 (pp. 287-303).

2) For choice (one text from the first group, one text from the second)

First group:

L. Hughes, The Weary Blues (1923)

H. Crane, The Bridge (1930)

W. C. Williams, Paterson, Book 1 (1946)

G. Brooks, Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956)

G. Scott Heron, So Far So Good (1990)

N. Giovanni, The Selected Poetms of Nikki Giovanni (1996)

Second group :

S. Crane, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893)

R. Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

R. Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953)

Th. Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

P. Auster, City of Glass (1985)

D. DeLillo, Underworld (1997)

Additional readings (optional)
Anyone who is uncertain about the nature of the literary text, English prosody and the basic approaches to the study of literature, can freely consult:

1) L. Chines, C. Varotti, Che cos’è un testo letterario, Roma, Carocci, 2015 (pp. 7-133)

2) J. Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason. A Guide to English Verse, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001 (pp. 1-65)

Anyone wishing to read an introduction to theory and literary criticism is invited to access:

“Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism”, Purdue Online Writing Lab (Purdue University):

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/index.html

Online access to Sources

Within the limits of fair use, texts that are not available in the library will be made available in .pdf format on Studium.

Briefing Note on Copyright

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied.

For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright).

All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library.

Oral exam at the end of the course (see oral exam schedule)

Criteria

Evaluation, in order of importance, of: (a) skills (know-how); (b) knowledge (c) exhibition skills (d) individual programs.

Entry (a) refers to: logical consistency, quality of evidence produced to support the argument; recognition and use of genres, forms and text types; mastery of the tools to the analysis of the literary text. Entry (b) refers to knowledge of North American literature in English, and in particular to texts and their correct placement: diachronic, diatopic, (inter) (con) / textual. Entry (c) refers to: analytical and synthetic expository skills; adequacy of stylistic registers; richness and lexical appropriateness; linguistic cohesion. Entry (d) refers to the ability to design an individual study program in relative autonomy.

There follows a list of possible topics on which to argue and of which to discuss at the exam. Of course, what is listed below is intended as example and guideline.

1) Description and argumentation of an important cultural and / or literary movement (Transcendentalism, Realism, Captivity Narratives, Slave Narratives, Modernism, Postmodernism, and so on).

2) Presentation in context of the work of a canonical author of American literature, even if it is not the subject of an anthological choice (e.g. Chopin, Crane, Dickinson, Emerson, Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Franklin, Hawthorne, James, Melville, Poe, Stevens, Thoreau, Twain, Wharton, Whitman ...).

3) Critical discussion of one or more classics of your choice.

4) Critical discussion of one or more texts of the individual anthological choice, with reference to genres, forms, text types.

5) Critical discussion of urban fiction in prose and verse.