Università Roma Tre

This course is an introduction to the national literature of the United States. I will explore the cultural complexities of an emerging and changing nation as revealed by representative authors such as Mary Rowlandson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and others. I will also emphasize the ways in which classic American literary texts have provided themes, styles, and narrative techniques to a distinctively American film culture. Through this course students will develop close reading and analytical writing skills. Attendance is highly recommended for prospective American Literature majors.

Perry Miller, "Errand into the Wilderness", William & Mary Quarterly, 10.1 (Jan 1953), pp. 3-32
https://www-jstor-org.biblio-proxy.uniroma3.it/stable/2936876?sid=primo&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (Catalogo elettronico di Roma Tre)

La dichiarazione di indipendenza degli Stati Uniti d’America (1776)
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=2&page=transcript

Costituzione degli Stati Uniti d'America (1787)
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=9&page=transcript

Bill of Rights (1791)
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=13&page=transcript

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1791), edited by Joyce E. Chaplin, New York, Norton, 2012, ISBN: 978-0393935615
-- Joyce E. Chaplin, "Introduction", pp.xiii-xxvi.
-- Benjamin Franklin, "The Outline of Autobiography", pp. 195-98.
-- Benjamin Franklin, "Epitaph", (1728), p. 255.
-- Benjamin Franklin, "Junto Query on Human Perfection" (1732), p. 255-6.
-- Benjamin Franklin, "To Joseph Priestly" (1772), pp. 259-60.
-- Mark Twain, "The late Benjamin Franklin" (1870), pp. 306-8.

-- Hector St. John Crèvecoeur, Letters from An American Farmer, "Letter III: What Is An American", 1782.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/letter_03.asp

Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (1794), edited by Cathy Davidson, New York, Oxford UP 1986 o qualunque altra edizione.
-- Rebecca Garden, "Confined to Bed: Illness, Narrative, and Female Authority", Literature and Medicine, Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2013, pp. 40-62 (Catalogo elettronico di Roma Tre)

William Apess, "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man", 1833 URL
https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/engl6a_kj_apess_lookingglass.pdf

Edgar, Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition", 1846
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69390/the-philosophy-of-composition

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Peterborough, Broadview Press, 2017, ISBN: 9781554812691 (Attenzione: va ordinato con largo anticipo).
-- Robert D. Habich, "Introduction", pp. 11-40.
-- Nature (1836), pp. 47-86.
-- Circles (1841), pp. 127-138

Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Lived, and What I lived for", in Walden (1854)
https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/
-- "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849)
https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/civil/

Frederick Douglass, "What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July",1852
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/civilwarrecon/cwcause/Douglass%20Fourth%20of%20July.pdf

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), edited by Frances Smith Foster and Richard Yarborough, New York, Norton Second Critical Edition, 2018, ISBN: 978-0393614565
-- Frances Smith Foster and Richard Yarborough, "Introduction", pp. vii-xix.
-- pp. 173-193.
-- Sara Antonelli, "Introduzione" all'edizione Italiana (Vita di una ragazza schiava, Roma, Donzelli, 2004, (Catalogo cartaceo di Roma Tre).

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), edited by Stephen Railton, Peterborough, Broadview Press, 2011, ISBN: 978-1554810048 (Attenzione: va ordinato con largo anticipo).
-- Stephen Railton, "Introduction", pp. 9-41.
-- "Introducing Huckleberry Finn (1895), pp. 380-1
-- "Chapter from My Autobiography, XIII", North American Review 184 (March 1907), pp. 381-4.
-- Alessandro Portelli, "Mark Twain e le parole proibite", il manifesto 2011.
http://alessandroportelli.blogspot.com/2011/01/mark-twain-e-le-parole-proibite.html
-- Robert O'Meally, "Blues per Huckleberry", Acoma 26 (primavera 2003), anno IX.
http://www.acoma.it/sites/default/files/pdf-articoli/06%20O%27Meally.pdf

Emily Dickinson, Silenzi, cura e traduzione di Barbara Lanati, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2014, ISBN: 978-8807900853
-- Terence Davies, A Quiet Passion, 2016.
-- Ashby Bland Crowder, "Emily Dickinson's Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant", The Explicator, 71:4 (2013), pp. 236-9 (Catalogo elettronico di Roma Tre).
-- Joel Martyr, "Emily Dickinson's Pyramid Scheme", The Explicator, 74:2 (2016), pp. 99-103 (Catalogo elettronico di Roma Tre).

Hans Bertens & Theo D’haen, American Literature: A History, London, Routledge, 2013.
-- "Beginnings to 1810"
-- "Towards cultural independence: 1810 to the Civil War"

N.B. Students who are not able to attend classes will study the same syllabus/books above.