Università Roma Tre

Religiosity and rebellion in Whitman and Dickinson.
The poet appropriated by cinema to create a visual counterpart of teen-agers' rebellion through Dead Poets Society presents a poetics of religion taking origin from physical vitality and the idea of progress.
Even if not through a direct interaction with Whitman, Dickinson's approach to God is non-conventional, and is quite far from her family's involvement in religious matters, in spite of the fact that she chose not to leave her father's home. During the course, some of her poems revolving on the "volcano" as the poetic motif that led her to sum up her life as a "loaded gun," will be examined, using also "translation" as a mode of analysis.
In addition to the critical appreciation of Whitman's and Dickinson's poems, some creative contemporary work will be presented to the students as a revival of the two poets' independent spirit.

Texts:
Walt Whitman, Poems (any edition) (a choice of essays will be selected for further reading)
Emily Dickinson, Poems (any edition) (a choice of essays will be selected for further reading)
Kindle edition of: Paul Di Filippo, Walt and Emily
Film:
Dead Poets Society
Critical approach:
Walt Whitman, Utopia in the Present Tense: Walt Whitman and the Language of the New World, ed. Marina Camboni, Roma 1994 (a choice of essays will be selected for further reading)
Adrienne Rich, “Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson,” reprinted in On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 (New York, 1979).
Helen Barolini, “The Italian Side of Emily Dickinson,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 70, n. 3 (summer 1994) 461-79.
Daniela Gioseffi, “Adoration for Italy in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: Emotional Symbolism and Womanly Rebellion,” iitaly (October 2, 2001): click inside the piece when prompted for a longer version of it.