ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE I
Students will acquire familiarity with a wide range of literary terms and categories relating to literary history, theory, and criticism, including figurative language. They will also develop skills in close reading, interpretation, historical contextualization, and critical thinking.
American Literature from the origins to the Civil War: This survey course will introduce students to American literature and culture. We will read a selection of representative authors and texts of the above indicated period. We will read quite a good number of texts, but ALL of them are rather short!
The 9 credit course includes the following texts and topics:
The Puritan Age
-John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)
-Mary Rowlandson, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (First, Second, Third, Twelfth, and Twentieth Remove), (1682)
-Cotton Mather, “The Wonders of the Invisible World” (1692)
The Enlightenment in the United States
-The Declaration of Independence (1776)
-Hector De Crèvecoeur ‘What is an American’, from “Letters from an American Farmer” (1782)
- Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography” (1791-1868) pp. 254-269; 297-308 Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Eight Edition
The Nineteenth Century: Antebellum America and American Renaissance
-Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” (1845), “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
-Ralph W. Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837)
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1832), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844)
-Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
-Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)
-Walt Whitman, “Preface to Leaves of Grass”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1855)
-Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweetest”, “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”, "There is a certain Slant of light", "This is my letter to the World", “Because I could not stop for Death”, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant—”
Critical Bibliography:
-Norton Anthology of American Literature (Preferably the 8th Shorter Edition, or any other edition available in the library):
AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1700: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1700-1820: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1820-1865: Introduction and Timeline
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHORS IN THE SYLLABUS
-A Companion to the American Short Story, eds. A. Bendixen and J. Nagel, Malden, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010:
B. F. Fisher, “Poe and the American Short Story”, pp. 20-34
S. T. Ryan, “A Guide to Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’”, pp. 35-49
A. Bendixen, “Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American Short Story”, pp. 50-67
-Storia della civiltà letteraria degli Stati Uniti, vol. 1, a cura di E. Elliott, Torino, UTET, 1990:
S. Bercovitch, “La visione puritana del nuovo mondo”, pp. 28-37
K. Silverman, “Da Cotton Mather a Benjamin Franklin”, pp. 83-92
The 6 credit course includes the following texts and topics:
The Puritan Age
-John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)
-Mary Rowlandson, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (First, Second, Third, Twelfth, and Twentieth Remove), (1682)
The Enlightenment in the United States
-The Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography” (1791-1868) pp. 254-269; 297-308 Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Eight Edition
The Nineteenth Century: Antebellum America and American Renaissance
-Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
-Ralph W. Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837)
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1832), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)
-Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
-Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)
-Walt Whitman, “Preface to Leaves of Grass”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1855)
-Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweetest”, “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”, "There is a certain Slant of light", "This is my letter to the World", “Because I could not stop for Death”, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant—”
Critical Bibliography:
-Norton Anthology of American Literature (Preferably the 8th Shorter Edition, or any other edition available in the library):
AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1700: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1700-1820: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1820-1865: Introduction and Timeline
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHORS IN THE SYLLABUS
Any edition of the texts indicated in the detailed program.
-NORTON ANTHOLOGY of American Literature (POSSIBLY The Shorter Eight Edition, or any other available editon);
-ELLIOTT, Emory, a cura di, Storia della civiltà letteraria degli Stati Uniti, Torino, UTET, 1990, 2 Voll.;
-BENDIXEN, Alfred and NAGEL, James, ed. by, A Companion to the American Short-Story, Blackwell, 2010;
Regular lessons; class presentations
The oral final exam will consist of a number of questions (3-5) on the texts included in the syllabus, the historical context, the American culture from the origins to the Civil War, and the critical bibliography in the syllabus. The exam will assess the following skills and abilities: detailed knowledge of the primary text; ability to contextualize texts from a historical and cultural point of view; close analysis of the formal and thematic features of texts. The grading scale goes from 1 to 30 cum laude (excellent). The exam is graded: excellent 30 cum laude-30; very good (27-29); good (24-26), fair (21 -23), sufficient (18-22), insufficient (17 or below).
All texts are available in the university main library. Some of them are available online. Students are also expected to read the Norton Anthology introductions to the authors discussed in class and the other critical texts included in the bibliography. Class hours and office hours can be found on the Department website