31055 - LETTERATURE ANGLO-AMERICANE 1

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

Al termine del corso lo studente conosce le linee generali della storia della letteratura, è in grado di leggere, comprendere e tradurre testi in lingua ed è avviato all'uso dei metodi e degli strumenti di base di tipo analitico, per interpretare le opere dei principali autori, contestualizzandoli nella cultura e nel periodo storico di riferimento.

Contenuti

The Literary Identity of North-America: United States & Canada.

The course (9 cfu) is aimed at 1st year students of "Laurea triennale" who have chosen "Letterature Anglo-Americane" (American Literature) as the literature to be associated with one "lingua triennale" (namely, English).

The course is an introduction to the literature of North America written in English and focuses particularly on identity issues and the perception of a "national" literature.

The course is structured into two parts:

1. the main section (40 hours) will focus on the United States;
2. a 20-hour module (taught by Dott. Giuliana Gardellini) will focus on anglophone Canada.

1. United States

The literary and cultural history of the US will be illustrated for the temporal span that goes from the Colonial period (with obvious incursions into the pre-Columbian European imagination) to 1915 (post WW1-to date elements will be studied in the following years). Identity formations and literary elements will be examined with a particular attention to the cultural dynamics at work.

2. Canada

The specific module will introduce the literature and culture of English speaking Canada, spanning from the birth of the Confederation to the 20th century. An interdisciplinary approach will reveal the complexity of the Canadian identity, illuminating the country's various cultural and artistic geographies.

Main topics : Canada, stereotypes and imagination / "Real" Canada. The hard “conquest” of Canada (Susanna Moodie) / The birth of a nation: Canada (from the Confederation to the Group of Seven) / Animation filmmaking (MacLaren, Leaf, Back) / The Canadian Renaissance (Margaret Atwood) / Postmodern landscapes (Moodie, MacLeod, Newlove, Atwood, Mistry, Verdicchio) / Problematic identity discourses (multiculturalism and about) / Oneiric revisitations of identity discourses (Gwendolyn MacEwen).

Testi/Bibliografia

1. Franco Minganti. United States

A. Literary History

The student is required to know the history of American literature, from its origins through 1915.

Textbook: Guido Fink, Mario Maffi, Franco Minganti, Bianca Tarozzi, Storia della letteratura americana (nuova edizione), Firenze: Sansoni (1991) 2013 (See chapters I-II-III)

B. Reference (all readings are mandatory)

[*] Marked texts belong in A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (Cambridge, MA/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009)

* Toby Lester, “A New Geography” (1507. The name “America” appears on a map) [*]

* Tzvetan Todorov, "Perché diciamo America. Quinto centenario della scoperta. Vespucci contro Colombo: le ragioni di un nome" [AlmaDL/AMS Campus]

* Sacvan Bercovitch, "How the Puritans Discovered America" [AlmaDL/AMS Campus]

* Emory Elliott, “The American Jeremiad” (1670. Samuel Danforth invokes the Puritan “errand into the wilderness”) [*]

* Susan Castillo, “The Salem Trials” (1692. Four young girls accuse three women of witchcraft) [*]

* Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/512/512-h/512-h.htm#goodman

* J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, “What Is an American” (from Letters from an American Farmer) http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4666/pg4666.html

* Leo Damrosch, “Letters from an American Farmer” (1765, December 23. Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur is naturalized as a citizen of the colony of New York) [*]

* Marc Amfreville, “American Gothic” (1798. Charles Brockden Brown publishes Wieland; or, The Transformation) [*]

* Charles Brockden Brown, Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist [A fragment] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/842/842-h/842-h.htm

* Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration [...] (Intro, 1st, 2nd, 3rd Removes) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/851/851-h/851-h.htm#2H_4_0001

* Nancy Armstrong, “Mary Rowlandson and the Alien and Sedition Acts” (1798. Congress passes its version of the Indian captivity narrative) [*]

* Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2048/pg2048.txt

* Judith Richardson, “Cupola of the World” (1809. Diedrich Knickerbocker constructs the Empire City) [*]

* Herman Melville, Benito Cereno http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15859/15859-h/15859-h.htm#toc_4

* W.T. Lhamon, Jr., “Rogue Blackness” (1830. Jim Crow jumps the American stage) [*]

C. Primary Texts (two items from the following list)

* Walt Whitman, Song of Myself [Book III of Leaves of Grass] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1322/1322-h/1322-h.htm#2H_4_0027

* Emily Dickinson, dieci poesie a scelta

* R.W. Emerson, The American Scholar (1837)http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#THE_AMERICAN_SCHOLAR

* H.D. Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)http://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm

* Frederick Douglass, “My Escape from Slavery” (1881) http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=DouEsca.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

* Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1843) http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8642/pg8642.html

The reading of the following essays is mandatory:

* Angus Fletcher, “The Book of a Lifetime” (1855. Walt Whitman uses a letter from Emerson to advertise the first edition of Leaves of Grass) [*]

* Susan Stewart, “Children, Women, Queens” (1861. Emily Dickinson writes to her cousins: ‘When did the war really begin?') [*]

* James Conant, “The American Scholar” (1837, August 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson warns, ‘The American eagle is very well... but beware of the American peacock') [*]

* Jonathan Arac, “'Civil Disobedience' and Walden” (1846, late July. While living at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau is arrested for refusing to pay his poll tax) [*]

* Liam Kennedy, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852, July 5. Frederick Douglass addresses the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Sewing Society) [*]

* Lawrence Buell, “The End of American Transcendentalism” (1850, July 19. Margaret Fuller dies in the wreck of the Elizabeth off the shore of Fire Island) [*]

D. Novels (two books from the following list)

* James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

* Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)

* Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

* Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

* Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

The reading of the following essays is mandatory:

* Richard Hutson, “Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales” (1826. Natty Bumppo returns in The Last of the Mohicans) [*]

* Bharati Mukherjee, “The Scarlet Letter” (1850. Nathaniel Hawthorne confesses his desire to ‘kill the public') [*]

* Greil Marcus, “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale” (1851. ‘Give it up, sub-subs!') [*]

* Beverly Lowry, “Uncle Tom's Cabin” (1851-1852. Readers eagerly await weekly installments of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, serialized in the National Era) [*]

* Ishmael Reed, “Mark Twain's Hairball” (1884. A man and a boy go down the Mississippi) [*]

E. Films (Students are warmly invited to watch the following movies, in case they don’t catch up with them in class)

* The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926)

* Rip Van Winkle (Francis Ford Coppola, 1982)

* Moby-Dick (John Huston, 1956)

* Ethnic Notions (Marlon Riggs, 1987)

* Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000)

 

2. Giuliana Gardellini. Canada

For an introduction to Canadian literature: Alessandro Gebbia, “La letteratura anglo-canadese”, in A. Lombardo (a cura di) Le orme di Prospero. Le nuove letterature di lingua inglese: Africa, Caraibi, Canada, Roma, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1995.

For an introduction to Canadian imagination: Margaret Atwood, Survival. A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972).

Primary Sources

* Susanna Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush (1852)

* Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970)

* Rohinton Mistry, “Squatter”, in Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987)

* Gwendolyn MacEwen, Noman's Land (1985)

N.B.: The above syllabus is mandatory. The final will be an oral exam on the themes discussed in class and on the course syllabus.

"Minimal" reading list

N.B. The following reading list is optional for "frequentanti", while it is highly recommended for "non frequentanti"

* Bruti Liberati L. & Codignola L., Storia del Canada, Milano, Bompiani, 1997

* Capone, Giovanna, Canada. Il villaggio della terra, Bologna, Patron, 1978

* Frye, Northrope, Mythologizing Canada. Essay on the Canadian Literary Imagination, edited by Branko Gorjup,Toronto, Legas, 1997

* Frye, Northrope, The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination, Toronto, Anansi, 1971

* Hutcheon, Linda, The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction, Oxford, OxfordU P, 1988

* Lanzillo, Maria Laura, Il multiculturalismo, Bari, Laterza, 2005

* Farné Roberto, “Cinema di animazione”, in Iconologia didattica. Le immagini per l'educazione dall'Orbis Pictus a Sesame Street, Bologna, Zanichelli, 2002

Metodi didattici

Lecture format

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

The final consists of two separate parts, one on the United States program, one on the Canada section. The two different grades will be calculated into one final mark.

The part on the US comprises a paper and an oral exam on the specific course syllabus; while the part on Canada will be accomplished through an oral discussion on the course tutor’s program.

In detail...

1. United States

Students shall submit a 3-page long paper, conforming to either one of the following modes (in case of doubts, please contact the instructor):

1. (critical) review ("scheda di lettura") of one of the primary texts in the syllabus, either a novel or a short-story (i.e. illustration of your personal reading - "restituzione di una lettura" - organized around some specific theme. Do avoid Wikipedia-like formats. That is, info on plots and/or characters and/or publishing history, are not necessary).
2. (critical) review ("scheda di lettura") of one of the critical essays in the syllabus, chosen among those selected from the New Literary History of America (edited by Marcus & Sollors). What is needed here is not as much a summary of the piece, as a critical evaluation of the essay, hopefully linked with the student's personal reading of the primary text(s) it refers to.

The administration of paperwork (if limited in length) aims at having students exercise their writing abilities in connection with critical discourse, in order for them to be better equipped for the writing of their final dissertation. The short format is here an experiment adapted to shorter forms of critical essay-writing, as exemplified by the adoption of innovative formats of literary histories (namely the volume edited by Marcus & Sollors). Papers will be evaluated with reference to the critical and methodological competence developed. The quality and propriety of the written language used will constitute a significant element of the overall evaluation.

The oral exam will move from the instructor's comments and remarks on the paper to the overall program. The conversation will ascertain the student's knowledge of the syllabus and awareness of the overall cultural contexts of American literature in the various periods examined. The student's preparation - her/his knowledge and understanding, ability of making autonomous judgements, communication and learning skills, as applied to the course's specific grounds (expressely, the understanding of literary texts) - will be fully assessed.

2. Canada

An oral interview is aimed at ascertaining the competences and abilities acquired during the course, namely: a. General understanding of the cultural, historical and literary issues pertaining to Canada; b. Knowledge of the contents of all of the mandatory texts included in the bibliography; c. Ability to contextualize them in the Canadian cultural scene; d. A critical approach with respect to the cultural and literary contents of the texts.

For both oral parts on the literature of the United States and Canada, here is the spectrum of possible evaluations:

a. Excellent (30 e lode): excellent knowledge of all of the contents of the course. Excellent ability to analyze the texts and to contextualize them in an appropriate way. Excellent critical approach to all the materials included in the syllabus.

b. Very good/Good (30 to 27): very good/good knowledge of all of the contents of the course. Very good/good ability to analyze the texts and to contextualize them in an appropriate way. Very good/good critical approach to all of the materials included in the syllabus.

c. Adequate (26-24): adequate knowledge of the contents of the course. Adequate ability to analyze the texts and to contextualize them. Acceptable critical approach to the materials included in the syllabus.

d. Fair/sufficient (23-18): the knowledge of the contents of the course is not complete. The ability to analyze the texts and/or to contextualize them is not wholly satisfactory. The critical approach is not wholly adequate.

e. Fail (below 18): the knowledge of the contents of the course is not acceptable. The ability to analyze the texts and/or to contextualize them is not acceptable. The critical approach is not acceptable.

NB: As to the US part of the program, in front of a negative evaluation of the student's paperwork, the ensuing conversation exchange with the instructor would offer the student a possibility to explain faults and limits of her/his work. Students unable to reach the required minimal level of proficiency would need to re-take the exam on some other session.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

Multimedia materials, including movies and film clips

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Franco Minganti