ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Knowledge (Contents)

Knowledge of genres, texts, contexts and representative North American writers in English (XVII-XXI century). Introduction to literary theory (focus on performance studies).

Know-How (Skills)

Text-types and literary genres recognition. Critical reading (textual/contextual analysis, and first theoretical appraisal) of Anglo-American literary texts. Identification of the dynamics between the written text and the spoken word.

Lectures and class discussion of the assignements given after each new presentation of an archetypal narrative. The assigned readings will be available on Studium.

Module A “Texts, Contexts, Cognitive Maps”

Introduction to literary theory and text-analysis. Diachonic, diatopic and thematic maps of AmLit.

Module B “Poetry in performance”

Textual execution in poetic readings, artistic performances and the interaction of the arts and the artists: Vachel Lindsay, Kenneth Patchen, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Eileen Myles, Joy Harjo.

► Modulo A

1) All the writers listed below as “classics” and the major “literary movements” as per one of the literary histories, as per in “Resources”.

2) Sixteen representative texts chosen from one of the anthologies mentioned in “Resources”.

3) Two classics, in whatever 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); E.A. Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque (1840); F. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845); N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850); M. Fuller, Memoirs (1852); W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855); H, Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861); Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); E. Dickinson, Selected Poems (1890); H. Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (1891); S. Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895); K. Chopin, The Awakening (1899); J. London, The Iron Heel (1908); 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).

Resources

(a) Anthologies

P. Lauter (gen. ed.), The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Lexington, D.C. Heath & Co. (any edition).

N. Baym et alii, (eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, New York, W. W. Norton & Co. (any edition).

D. McQuade et alii (eds.), The Harper American Literature, New York, HarperCollins (any edition).

Project Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org

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

Penn Sound: The Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing

https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/

Casa della Poesia http://www.casadellapoesia.org

(b) Literary Histories

P. Lauter (ed.), A Companion to American Literature and Culture, Hobboken, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

R. Gray, A History of American Literature, Blackwell, Malden and Oxford 2004;. G. Fink, Storia della letteratura americana, Milano, Rizzoli, 2013.

D. Campbell, Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events: Pre-1620 to 1920. http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/

(c) Literary Theory and Criticism

“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

► Module B

From text execution in poetry readings to performance with or without interaction with other artists, the North American poets of the XX-XXI centuries have filled the distance between orality and writing with the presence of the voice and their bodies on stage

Students will study at least five primary sources (texts, audio files, videos), one secondary source (articles, reviews, short stories, podcasts) and the two methodological essays.

Unless otherwise indicated, texts, recordings of the author's readings and critical reviews/podcasts can be found at the the Poetry Foundation website.

Testi, audio files, videos

Vachel Lindsay

“One More Song”; “Two Old Crows”; “The Flower-Fed Buffaloes”; “The Congo”, “The Mysterious Cat”; “How Dulcinea del Toboso is Like the Left Wing of a Bird”.

Kenneth Patchen

“The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves”; “The State of the Nation”; “Do the Dead Know what Time It Is?”; “Lonesome Boy Blues”; “I Went to the City”; “In Order To”; “Do I Not Deal With Angels”; “The City Wears a Slouch Hat” (partitura di John Cage).

Allen Ginsberg

“Howl”; “A Supermarket in California”; “My Sad Self”; “Homework”; “Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams”; “Father Death Blues”; “Sphincter”.

Amiri Baraka

“Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note”; “Legacy”; “Incident”; “Dope”; “Africa”; “The X Is Black (Spike Lie)”; “Somebody Blew Up America”.

Bob Dylan

“Blowin’ in the Wind”; “All Along the Watchtower”; “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”; “It Ain’t Me Babe”; “Ballad of a Thin Man”; “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum”.

Laurie Anderson

“New York Social Life”; “O Superman”; “Language Is A Virus”; “The Day the Devil”; “Pieces and Parts”; “Voices on Tape”;“Drum Dance & Smoke Rings”; “Sharkey’s Day”; “Sharkey’s Night” (con William Burroughs).

Eileen Myles

“Dream”; “Dream 2”; “Prophesy”; “Snake”; “The Honey Bear”; “A Gift for You”.

Joy Harjo

“Grace”; “A Poem to Get Rid of Fear”; “An American Sunrise”; “She Had Some Horses”; “My House Is the Red Hearth”; “Creation Story”; “A Postcolonial Tale”.

Articles, interviews, short stories, podcasts on writers/performers

On Bernstein, A. Nielsen, and M. Taransky (podcast)

On Patchen | “All that Poetry” (podcast)

On Ginsberg | R. Hazelton, “Adventures in Anaphora”

On Baraka | R. Oyama, “On Amiri Baraka: Who Was That Masked Man?”, Rain Taxi, Summer 2014

https://www.raintaxi.com/on-amiri-baraka-who-was-that-masked-man/

On Bob Dylan | J.C. Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” (short story)

https://www.cusd200.org/cms/lib/IL01001538/Centricity/Domain/361/oates_going.pdf

On Anderson | D. Shewey, “The Performing Artistry of Laurie Anderson” https://www.donshewey.com/music_articles/laurie_anderson_NYT.html

On Myles | B. Teare, “Everything Moves Close: New Poems by Eileen Myles”, Los Angeles Review of Books, August 24, 2012

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everything-moves-close-new-poems-by-eileen-myles

On Harjo | L. Napikoski, “Joy Harjo. Feminist, Indigenous, Poetic Voice”

https://www.thoughtco.com/joy-harjo-3529034

Poetry Reading e Performance Theory

P. Middleton, “The Contemporary Poetry Reading” in Close Listening. Poetry and the Performed World, ed. by Ch. Bernstein, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 262-299.

S. Marano, “Il ventaglio e la rete. Teoria e pratica della performance”, in

Performance. Dal testo al gesto, e-book a c. di S. Marano, Catania, duetredue 2017, n.p.

► Further readings

Those who have uncertainties about the literary text, the prosody of English and the theoretical approaches to the study of literature, can freely consult:

1) L. Chines, C. Varotti, Che cos’è un testo letterario, Roma, Carocci, 2015²

2) J. Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason. A Guide to English Verse, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001³.

Online access to sources

(a) Texts, audifiles, videos that are not on Poetry Foundation

V. Lindsay | Audio files of “The Congo”, “How Dulcinea del Toboso is Like the Left Wing of a Bird”, “The Mysterius Cat” are Penn Sound. The texts of “The Mysterius Cat” is available on Poem Hunter: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-mysterious-cat/

K. Patchen | The first five poems come from a poetry reading with the accompaniment of the Chambers Jazz Orchestra (which includes also the performances of “And with the Sorrows of this Joyousness”; “The Lute in the Attic”; “Limericks”) accessible on Youtube.

Texts that are not on Poetry Foundation are:

“The State of the Nation”

https://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=2&poet=674

“Do the Dead Know what Time It Is?

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-the-dead-know-what-time-it-is/

“The Lute in the Attic”

https://kittyaloneandi.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/the-lute-in-the-attic/

“Lonesome Boy Blues”

https://songofamerica.net/song/lonesome-boy-blues/

“I Went to the City”

https://seapoetry.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/national-poetry-month-2015-week-one-kenneth-patchens-i-went-to-the-city/

The audio files of “In Order To”; “Do I Not Deal With Angels”; “The City Wears a Slouch Hat” (score by John Cage) are on Youtube.

A. Ginsberg | Both text and audio file of “Sphincter” are on Penn Sound: https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sphincter.html

https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ginsberg/Hudson-1994/Ginsberg-Allen_19_Sphincter_Hudson-NY_4-22-94.mp3

“Father Death Blues” can be listened to on Penn Sound and read at Casa della Poesia: http://www.casadellapoesia.org/poeti/ginsberg-allen/father-death-blues/poesie

A. Baraka | Texts, mp3 e links to the performances of “The X is Black (Spike Lie)” and “Somebody Blew Up America” are on Penn Sound. “The X is Black (Spike Lie)” can be found at Casa della Poesia: http://www.casadellapoesia.org/poeti/baraka-amiri/la-x-e-nera

The performance of “Africa” is on Youtube.

L. Anderson | All her performances are on Youtube

J. Harjo | Her solo performance of “Grace”; “A Poem to Get Rid of Fear” are one Youtube, as well as “She Had Some Horses”; “My House Is the Red Hearth”; “Creation Story” “A Postcolonial Tale” (performed with the Poetic Justice band).

(b) Methodology

Within the limits of fair use, the texts will be available in .pdf 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, when not in the Library, will be made available online.