ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Knowledge (Contents)

Genres, texts, contexts, works and representative North American writers in English (XVII-XXI century).

Know-How (Skills)

Text-types and literary genre recognition and use. Critical reading (textual, contextual, intertextual analysis) of representative Anglo-American works.

Module A (6 ECTS, 36 hrs) “Maps, Tools, Models, Categories, Texts, Contexts”

History of American Literature (XVII-XXI century) and introduction to the reading of works authors, themes, motifs, text-types, genres and literary forms.

Module B (3 ECTS, 18 hrs) “Sci-Fi between pulp fiction and highwbrow lit”

Automatons, robots, cyborgs, AIs in a century and a half of science-fiction.

Module A

► J. Frow, Genre, New York, Routledge, 2005.

► J. Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason (enlarged ed.), New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001.

► One (1) history of AmLit, from the following list: P. Lauter (ed.), A Companion to American Literature and Culture, Hobboken, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010; or: R. Gray, A History of American Literature, Blackwell, Malden and Oxford 2004; or: G. Fink, Storia della letteratura americana, Milano, Rizzoli, 2013.

► Sixteen (16) texts from one of the following anthologies: P. Lauter (gen. ed.), The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Lexington, D.C. Heath & Co. (any edition); or: N. Baym et alii, (eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, New York, W. W. Norton & Co. (any edition); or: D. McQuade et alii (eds.), The Harper American Literature, New York, HarperCollins (any edition).

► Two (2) classics, in any critical edition, from the following list: M. Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682); B. Franklin, Autobiography (1793); C.B. Brown, Wieland (1798); W. Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1820); J.F. Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826); R.W. Emerson, Nature (1836); E.A. Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque (1840); N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850); H. Melville, Moby Dick (1851); M. Fuller, Memoirs (1852); H.D. Thoreau, Walden (1854); W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855); H. James, Daisy Miller (1879); Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); E. Dickinson, Poems (1890); S. Crane, Maggie. A Girl of the Streets (1893); K. Chopin, The Awakening (1899); T. Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900); J. London, The Iron Heel (1908); A. Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911); E. Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920); F.S. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920); T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922); E.E. Cummings, Tulips & Chimneys (1923); E. Hemingway, In Our Time (1923); W. Stevens, Harmonium (1923); L. Hughes, The Weary Blues (1924); J. Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925); W. Cather, The Professor’s House (1925); W. Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929); N. Larsen, Passing (1929); H. Crane, The Bridge (1930); G. Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933); J. Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat (1935); 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, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948); M. Moore, Collected Poems (1951); R. Ellison, Invisible Man (1952); A. Miller, The Crucible (1952); V. Nabokov, Lolita (1955); F. O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955); A. Ginsberg, Howl (1956); J. Kerouac, On the Road (1957); W. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959); H. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960); W.C. Williams, Pictures from Brueghel (1963); A. Baraka, Blues People (1963); G. Brooks, Selected Poems (1963); A. Sexton, Selected Poems (1964); Th. Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966); J. Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (1968); N.S. Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968); N. Mailer, The Armies of the Night (1968); J. Kosinski, Being There (1971); R. Brautigan, The Abortion (1971); I. Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972); G. Sorrentino, Splendide-Hotel (1973); J. Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975); L.M. Silko, Ceremony (1977); W. Abish, How German Is It (1980); 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); J. Harjo, She Had Some Horses (1983); D. Mamet, Glengarry Glenn Ross (1983); K. Acker, Blood and Gut in High School (1984); W. Gibson, Neuromancer (1984); P. Auster, City of Glass (1985); T. Morrison, Beloved (1987); G. Paley, Long Walks and Intimate Talks (1991); D. DeLillo, Underworld (1997); J. Franzen, The Corrections (2001); 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).

Module B

► One (1) novel, one (1) article and four (4) short-stories:

E.A. Poe, “Maelzel’s Chess-Player” (1836); id., “The Man That Was Used Up” (1839); A. Bierce, “Moxon’s Master” (1893); G.H. Putnam, “The Artificial Mother” (1894); Ph.K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps? (1968); J.C. Oates, “EDickinson RepliLuxe” (2006).

Online resources (not mandatory)

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

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

► D. Canty, “American Automata”, in horizon 0, 02: mimic, september 2002

http://www.horizonzero.ca/textsite/mimic.php?is=2&file=18&tlang=0