Università Roma Tre

Transatlantic Vistas

Part I (6 CFU) Italy in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature (Dr. Sabrina Vellucci)

In the first part of the course we will look at some of the canonical works of nineteenth-century American literature with the purpose of analyzing how they represent Italian (and European) culture. Students will be encouraged to critically reflect on the formal features of the different genres (novel, short story, essay, journal article), and on the intercultural and transcultural dynamics foregrounded in the texts through the confrontation between the United States and Italy. We will take into account such issues as the construction of national identity, the stereotypes attached to each culture, and the questions related to gender, class, and ethnicity.

Part II (6 CFU) The Anglophone European Culture in Nineteenth-Century US Literature (Prof. Maria Anita Stefanelli)

As first step we will read the essay “Margaret Fuller on the Stage”, in Capper and Giorcelli, Margaret Fuller: Transatlantic Crossings, in order to discover how S. Sontag has dealt with Fuller’s relationships with the female writers of the nineteenth-century century, E. Dickinson and A. James, in her play Alice in Bed. Then we will examine Fuller’s work on “woman in the nineteenth-century” to discover the cultural and literary ties with the three eighteenth-century Elizabeths - Vesey, Montague and Carter.

Part I (Prof. Sabrina Vellucci)

Texts
- Margaret Fuller, “These Sad But Glorious Days.” Dispatches from Europe, 1846-1850, eds. Larry J. Reynolds and Susan Belasco Smith (Yale UP, 1991) (selected articles);
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (Oxford UP, 2002);
- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress (Wordsworth Classics Edition, 2010);
- Henry James, Daisy Miller. Uno studio (Marsilio, 2017 – parallel text/translation);
- Edith Wharton, “Roman Fever” (any edition).

Criticism

Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century Italy, eds. Robert K. Martin, Leland S. Person (U of Iowa P, 2002) (Selected chapters and additional materials will be provided in class).

Literary history

- The Heath Anthology of American Literature – Vol. B, “Early Nineteenth Century: 1800-1865”, pp. 1443-1473; Vol. C, “Late Nineteenth Century: 1865-1910”, pp. 1-32 (volumes available at the Petrocchi Library).

- A New Literary History of America, eds. G. Marcus and W. Sollors (Harvard U.P. 2009), the following chapters: 1776 The Declaration of Independence; 1798 Mary Rowlandson and the Alien and Sedition Acts; 1826 Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales; 1826, 1927 Transnational poetry; 1831 The Cherokee Nation Decision; 1835 Democracy in America; 1836 The Alamo and Texas border; 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”; 1846 Henry David Thoreau; 1850 Margaret Fuller and the Transcendentalist Movement; 1851 Moby-Dick; 1852 Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”; 1855 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass; 1861 Emily Dickinson; 1872 All men and women are created equal; 1881 Henry James, Portrait of a Lady; 1895 Ida B. Wells, A Red Record; 1898 Literature and Imperialism. (The volume is available at the Petrocchi Library).

Text analysis (one of the following)

Loredana Chines, Carlo Varotti, Che cos’è un testo letterario (Carocci 2001);

Remo Ceserani, Breve guida allo studio della letteratura (Laterza 2003);

Robert Scholes, James Phelan, Robert Kellog, The Nature of Narrative (fortieth anniversary edition revised and expanded) (Oxford U.P. 2006).


Part II (Prof. Maria Anita Stefanelli)

Text:

Susan Sontag, Alice in Bed (any edition)

Critical works:

Charles Capper and Cristina Giorcelli, eds., Margaret Fuller: Transatlantic Crossings in a Revolutionary Age (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2007);

Emma Major, Madam Britannia: Women, Church, and Nation, 1712-1812 (Oxford U.P., 2012).