ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Lectures, assignements, class discussion.

Module A “Texts, Contexts, Cognitive Maps”

Diachonic, diatopic and thematic maps of AmLit. Introduction to a critical reading of works, authors, motifs, text-types, genres, forms.

Module B “Poetry in performance”

Textual execution in poetic readings, artistic performances and the interaction of the arts and the artists: Vachel Lindsay through Laurie Anderson.

► Module A

1) All the writers listed below as “classics” and the major “literary movements” as per one of the following literary histories:

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

(b) R. Gray, A History of American Literature, Blackwell, Malden and Oxford 2004;

(c) G. Fink, Storia della letteratura americana, Milano, Rizzoli, 2013.

Students are also required to consult the following reference sites:

(d) D. Campbell, Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events: Pre-1620 to 1920:

http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/

(e) Poetry Foundation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

2) Sixteen representative texts chosen from one of the following anthologies: P. Lauter (gen. ed.), The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Lexington, D.C. Heath & Co. (qualsiasi edizione); N. Baym et alii, (eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, New York, W. W. Norton & Co. (whatever edition); D. McQuade et alii (eds.), The Harper American Literature, New York, HarperCollins (whatever edition).

3) Two classics, in whatever critical edition, chosen from the following list: B. Franklin, Autobiography (1793); 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); E. Dickinson, Selected Poems (1890); H. Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (1891); Mark Twain, Pudd’n’head Wilson (1894); 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, Sanctuary (1931); G. Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933); E. Hemingway, Winner Take Nothing (1933); D. Barnes, Nightwood (1936); J. Fante, Ask the Dust (1939); C. McCullers, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1940); 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); J. Kerouac, On the Road (1957); W. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959); A. Baraka, Blues People (1963); G. Brooks, Selected Poems (1963); A. Sexton, Selected Poems (1964); R. Brautigan, The Abortion (1971); V. Nabokov, Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975); J. Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975); L.M. Silko, Ceremony (1977); Ph. K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977); W. Abish, How German Is It (1980); S. Plath, The Collected Poems (1981); R. Coover, Spanking the Maid (1982); J. Kosinski, Pinball (1982); E. Bishop, Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983); R. Carver, Cathedral (1983); R. Creeley, Collected Poems, 1945-1975 (1983); J. Harjo, She Had Some Horses (1983); D. Mamet, Glengarry Glenn Ross (1983); S. Shepard, Fool for Love (1983); W. Gibson, Neuromancer (1984); T. Morrison, Beloved (1987); J. Ellroy, My Dark Places (1996); D. DeLillo, Underworld (1997); 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); L. Anderson, All the Things I Lost in the Flood (2018).

► 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 the scene (NB: unless otherwise indicated, for the texts, the recordings of the author's readings and the critical reviews/podcasts etc, see the Poetry Foundation website).

V. Lindsay. “One More Song”; “Two Old Crows”; “The Flower-Fed Buffaloes”; “The Congo”.

[on V. Lindsay: Ch. Bernstein, A. Nielsen, and M. Taransky, “Noncanonical Congo: A Discussion of Vachel Lindsay’s “The Congo”, podcast]

C. Sandburg. “The Abracadabra Boys”; “Evening Waterfall”; “Fire-Logs”; “Wilderness”; “The Long Shadow of Lincoln; A Litany”.

[on C. Sandburg: R. Simonini, “Carl Sandburg Stops Making Sense”]

R. Frost. “Fire and Ice”; “The Tuft of Flowers”; “Acquainted with the Night”; “The Prophets Really Prophecy as Mystics, the Commentators Merely by Statistics”; “For Once, then, Something”.

[on R. Frost: “Kay Ryan on Robert Frost”, podcast]

K. Patchen. “The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-colored Gloves”; “As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other”; “My Generation Reading the Newspapers”; “The Unanswering Correspondences”; “Egypt”.

[on K. Patchen: “All that Poetry”. podcast https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/76082/all-that-poetry]

A. Ginsberg. “Howl”; “A Supermarket in California”; “My Sad Self”; “Homework”; “Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams”

[on A. Ginsberg: R. Hazelton, “Adventures in Anaphora”]

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”.

[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]

L. Anderson. “New York Social Life”; “O Superman”; “Language Is A Virus”; “The Day the Devil”; “Pieces and Parts”; “Voices on Tape”.

[on L. Anderson: D. Shewey, “The Performing Artistry of Laurie Anderson”

https://www.donshewey.com/music_articles/laurie_anderson_NYT.html]

P. Middleton, “The Contemporary Poetry Reading” in Close Listening. Poetry ad 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, a c. di S. Marano, Catania, duetredue 2017, [ebook, n.p.] [*]

[*] Within the limits allowed by fair use, texts marked with an asterisk will be made available in .pdf format

► Further readings

On the literary text, in prose or verse, student may wish to consult: L. Chines, C. Varotti, Che cos’è un testo letterario, Roma, Carocci, 2015 (2^nd ed.); J. Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason. A Guide to English Verse (New, Enlarged Edition), New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989.

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 can be consulted in the Library.