31353 - Anglo-American Literature 3

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, the students get to know a general outline and single aspects of the history of literature. They can understand, and translate into, texts in the original language; they have acquired basic theoretical knowledge that allows them to critically evaluate their contents; and they can explain and comment on texts according to methodologies specific to the analysis of the literary text.

Course contents

The course is aimed at students of Laurea triennale who have chosen Letterature Anglo-Americane (American Literature) as the literature to be associated with one lingua triennale (namely, English). In particular, it is aimed at students of both the 2nd and 3rd year of American Literature.

The course is also opened to exchange students of the various international programs (Erasmus, Overseas, and the like) activated with Unibo.

 

 The course is structured into three parts:

1. American Media Fictions – the main section (40 hours), taught by Prof. Franco Minganti;

2. The “Great” American Theater after WW2: Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams – the module (20 hours), taught by Dr. Giuliana Gardellini;

3. The “Institutional” Reading List (the so called "programma istituzionale": no frontal lessons for this part).

 

1. AMERICAN MEDIA FICTIONS – Main section (MINGANTI)

American Media Fictions is an ample thematic survey focussing on the American imagination of the media and the fictions that (re)stage them. Through it, students will become aware of the primary cultural importance of such a theme in contemporary America.

In particular, the course focuses on some modulations of the American imagination in relation to the “art of mediation” and the media world. We will talk about storytelling practices that are strongly and dialectically affected by the complex relations between fact and fiction, technology and culture, or by the strategies involved in staging the world of the media.

Under scrutiny will fall modes and figures of fiction – elaborated by literature, radio, film, tv, comics – which seem to depend on the nature of the very medium that is chosen as backdrop, and on its communicational and mythological statutes.

We will move from literary samples of the 19th century that problematize the relation between reality and its representation (for exemple, by way of “mediators/narrators”, ventriloquism, witchcraft mythologies), through the “technological” seriality of end-of-the-century popular fiction (also touching on fictions that deal with the very "mysterious" phenomenon of early film), into the cultural atmospheres of early 20th century, when newspapers, films and radio – but also vaudeville, comics, advertising, and photography – concur to change the storytelling scenarios, shedding light on, and amplifying, problems and fears associated to the potential of the media, their growing power, their mythological aura. On postmodern grounds, then, the Technological (here meant as media technology) reaches the center of fiction's subjectivity, while turning into the primary source for the production and circulation of storytelling.

The whole path covers a wide timeline and the course introduces authors quite different from each other, such as Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Delmore Schwartz, Budd Schulberg, Stanley Elkin, John Barth, Eric Bogosian, Dave Foster Wallace and many more. Movies will enter the course syllabus, among them A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan), Talk Radio (Oliver Stone), Radio Days (Woody Allen).

2. THE “GREAT” AMERICAN THEATER AFTER WW2: ARTHUR MILLER AND TENNESSEE WILLIAMS – The module (GARDELLINI)

The aim of this module is to introduce the dramatic work produced by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller contextualized in the changing American society and culture from World War II to the so-called “tranquillized Fifties”, and the progressive, accelerated transformations connected to the second half of the 20th century. For each author, three among the main plays will be analyzed:  Williams, The Glass Menagerie (1944-45); A Streetcar Named Desire (1947);Suddenly, Last Summer (1958); Miller, All My Sons (1947); Death of a Salesman (1949); After the Fall (1964). Where possible, some of the film versions ― or parts of them ― will be viewed and discussed.

3. THE "INSTITUTIONAL" READING LIST

This (mandatory) part of the program aims at reinforcing the understanding of specific aspects and themes of American literature by offering the students the opportunity to read primary texts, thus complementing their overall knowledge of the main developments of literary history. This is why the bibliography in this program will take the three different types of students involved -- namely A. students in their 2nd year of Am.Lit.; B. students in their 3rd year of Am.Lit.; C. Erasmus/exchange students at Unibo for one semester or one year -- to three different reference lists.

Readings/Bibliography

1. AMERICAN MEDIA FICTIONS (MINGANTI)

Syllabus. The following texts will be examined (for some of them only certain parts will fall under scrutiny):

Literary fictions

· Charles Brockden Brown, “Chapter 6”, in Wieland, or The Transformation (1798)

· Charles Brockden Brown, “The Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist” (1803)

· Edgar Allan Poe, “The Oval Portrait” (1842)

· Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Prophetic Pictures” (1837)

· Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birth-Mark” (1835)

  Brander Matthews, “The Kinetoscope of Time” (1895) [available here:  http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=AFR7379-0018-84 ]

· Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1932)

· Delmore Schwartz, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” (1938)

· John Barth, “Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction” (from Lost in the Funhouse, 1968)

· Robert Coover, “Panel Game” (from Pricksongs and Descants, 1969)

· Norman Spinrad, Bug Jack Barron (1969)

· Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

· Stephen Schneck, Nocturnal Vaudeville (1971)

· G.F. Gravenson, The Sweetmeat Saga: The Epic Story of the Sixties (1971) [excerpt]

· Keith Abbott, Rhino Ritz. An American Mystery (1979) [excerpt]

· Rob Swigart, The Time Trip (1979) [excerpt]

· Robert Coover, A Night at the Movies (1987) [excerpts]

· Eric Bogosian, Talk Radio (1988) [script]

· Garrison Keillor, A Radio Romance (1991) [chapters 1-7, pp.1-58]

· Leonore Fleischer, The Fisher King (1991) [chapters 1-3, pp.5-37]

· Jon Stephen Fink, Further Adventures (1991) [excerpts, pp.1-48]

· David Foster Wallace, “My Appearance” (from Girl with Curious Hair, 1989)

 Film fictions

A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957)

American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)

Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)

Radio Days (Woody Allen, 1987)

Talk Radio (Oliver Stone, 1988)

[The prologue in] The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam, 1990)

Quiz Show (Robert Redford, 1995)

Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 2006)

Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

Radioland Murders (Mel Smith, 1994)

Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood, 1971)

 Criticism

Franco Minganti, Modulazioni di frequenza. L'immaginario radiofonico tra letteratura e cinema (Udine: Campanotto Editore, 1997)

Gary Gumpert, “The Talking Tombstone, or Introduction to a Theme”, in Talking Tombstones and Other Tales of the Media Age (New York: Oxford UP, 1987)

John Berger, “Chapter 1”, in Ways of Seeing (London: BBC/Penguin, 1972)

Philip Lamantia, “Radio Voices: A Child's Bed of Sirens”, in Paul Buhle, ed., Popular Culture in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987)

Andrew Ross, “Candid Cameras”, in No Respect. Intellectuals & Popular Culture (New York/London: Routledge, 1989)

Julika Griem, “Screening America: Representations of Television in Contemporary American Literature”, in Amerikastudien/American Studies (Jahrgang 41, Heft 3/1996)

Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity. A Particular History of the Senses (London/New York: Routledge, 1993)

Tim Legler, Chris Tiedeman, Erik Piazza, “Ekphrasis” (2003)

W. J. T. Mitchell, “Ekphrasis and the Other”, in Picture Theory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994)

Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things. Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)

Steven Connor, Dumbstruck. A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)

2. THE “GREAT” AMERICAN THEATER AFTER WW2: ARTHUR MILLER AND TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (GARDELLINI)

Introductory text:

C.W.E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Vol. 2  Williams, Miller, Albee, CUP, 1984 (to be read entirely, with the exception of the chapter concerning Albee).

Primary texts:

Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (1944-45); A Streetcar Named Desire (1947); Suddenly, Last Summer (1958).

Arthur Miller, All My Sons (1947); Death of a Salesman (1949); After the Fall (1964).

3. THE “INSTITUTIONAL”READING LIST

Reference:

Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (Eds.), A New Literary History of America, Cambridge, Mass./London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009 Guido Fink, Mario Maffi, Franco Minganti, Bianca Tarozzi, Storia della letteratura americana (1991), Milano: Rizzoli, 2013
A. Students at their 2nd year of American Literature - Storia della letteratura americana, with reference to the period 1915-1945;
- Selection of 5 (critical) essays among those dated between 1900 and 1945 in A New Literary History of America, to be completed with the primary texts they refer to (novels, short stories, films, musical compositions).
B. Students at their 3rd year of American Literature - Storia della letteratura americana, with reference to the period 1945 to date;
Selection of 5 (critical) essays among those dated from 1945 to date, in A New Literary History of America, to be completed with the primary texts they refer to (novels, short stories, films, musical compositions).

C. Erasmus/Overseas exchange students These students should contact the course instructor at the beginning of classes in order to select the proper reading list, which may depend on the student's previous studies in the field of American literature or studies.

Teaching methods

Lecture course(s). Attendance is not mandatory, and yet strongly recommended.

Assessment methods

Indications for the assessment of the three parts of the exam:

1. American Media Fictions (Minganti). The course syllabus is mandatory and students will be required to write a paper after discussing its topic with the instructor. The paper will be 8-10 pages long (complete with notes and bibliography) and an oral discussion will take place about the paper and its correction (by “page” we mean 2000 characters, spaces included).

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). 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.

NB: 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.

2. American Theatre (Gardellini). The oral exam on the prescribed syllabus will ascertain and assess the student's knowledge of the syllabus, understanding of the context of American drama at large, ability of making autonomous judgements, communication and learning skills.

3. "Institutional program" (w/ Minganti or Gardellini). The oral exam will focus on the students' choices of the texts, both primary and critical.

NB: For the three parts of the exam, 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.

Teaching tools

Both course & module will occasionally 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

See the website of Giuliana Gardellini