30079 - Anglo-American Literature 1 (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course "American literary culture and the American voice of roots music: Woody Guthrie, Harry Smith'sAnthology, Bob Dylan" will introduce the students to an important strain of American literary and musical culture and to the "invisible Republic" (Greil Marcus's definition) that so much means to contemporary identity.

Course contents

American literary culture and the American voice of roots music: Woody Guthrie, Harry Smith'sAnthology, Bob Dylan

The course, open to the students of both years of Laurea Magistrale (Letterature moderne, comparate e postcoloniali) is scheduled to take place in the 2nd semester.

The course will focus on some specific aspects of American roots music in relation to American history, storytelling, literature, and culture at large. In the context of popular culture, the passage from oral musical traditions – mostly of European origin, and yet with important inserts of African retentions – to the hardcore bulk of recorded music collected by Harry Smith for his 1952 seminal Anthology of American Folk Music will be examined, the very same multicultural heritage that formed the basic texts on which the folk music revival of the late 1950s and 1960s took shape. The slippery notion of an “American character” will be touched upon, especially in relation with “timeless” balladry and the peculiar connection of the American voice with prophetic tradition. Symptomatic figures like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan will be under scrutiny, along with (more “subterranean”) influential ones like Harry Smith and Alan Lomax. The Greenwich Village scene and the early Newport festival will be analyzed. Some case studies will be offered of “anthems” like Guthrie's “This Land Is My Land” and Dylan's “Like a Rolling Stone” among others, while Greil Marcus's critical work, disseminated in various studies, will constitute the virtual backbone of the course. Films and documentaries will be screened, and audio sources listened to during the course.

Readings/Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

N.B.: What follows herewith is a preliminary, conciselist of sources that will be examined during the course. At the beginning of the course, a full bibliography will be distributed, along with the course schedule. Also, a course log will be published by the instructor on his institutional "webpage docente", constantly updating course developments and providing useful tips about the students' study.

Maurizio Bettelli (a cura di), Le canzoni di Woody Guthrie (2008)

Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk. Public Memory & American Roots Music (2000)

Bryan K. Garman, A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen (2000)

Greil Marcus, Like a Rolling Stone. Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005)
Greil Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come (2006)
Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010 (2010)
Greil Marcus, The Old, Weird America : The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes(2011 Special Edition with a New Introduction and an Updated Discography)
Alessandro Portelli, Note americane. Musica e culture negli Stati Uniti (2011)

Harry Smith (curator),The Anthology of American Folk Music (1952) [CD Collection]

Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (2010)

Teaching methods

Seminar course [in English] with part lecture, part class discussion. Attendance is strongly recommended.

Assessment methods

Students will be required to write a paper after discussing its topic & outline with the instructor. The paper will be 12-15 pages long (*) and an oral conversation will take place about the paper, its correction, and the course syllabus

(*) by “page” we mean 2000 characters, spaces included.

Teaching tools

For this course we will resort to audiovisual materials of various kinds, some of which are rare or not particularly easy to find.That is why attendance is strongly recommended.

Office hours

See the website of Franco Minganti