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 Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Octavia Butler, 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.

La dichiarazione di indipendenza degli Stati Uniti d’America (1776)
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/declaration-of-independence#transcript

Costituzione degli Stati Uniti d'America (1787)
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

Bill of Rights (1791)
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/bill-of-rights#transcript

Phillis Wheatley,
-- “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (1773)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45465/on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america
-- “To The Right Honorable, William, Earl of Dartmouth” (1773)
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/right-honourable-william-earl-dartmouth
--June Jordan, "Il difficile miracolo dellaa poesia nera in America: una sorta di sonetto per Phillis Weathley", ACOMA 3, Inverno 1993, pp. 4-13
http://www.acoma.it/sites/default/files/pdf-articoli/3jordan.pdf

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1791), edited by Joyce E. Chaplin, New York, Norton, 2012, ISBN: 978-0393935615, pp. 9-88.
-- 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.

Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20), New York, OUP, 2009, ISBN: 978-0199555819
-- "Rip Van Winkle"
-- "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Alessandro Portelli
-- "The buried king and the memory of the future: From Washington Irving to Bruce Springsteen", Memory Studies, Vol. 13, n. 3, 2020, pp. 267-76.
(Please download the article from the R3 Library Catalog)

Herman Melville, Benito Cereno (1855), a cura di Brian Yothers, Broadview Press, 2019, ISBN: 9781554813094 / 1554813093 (Da ordinare con largo anticipo)

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass/Foglie d'erba (1855), a cura di Mario Corona, con testo a fronte, Venezia, Marsilio, 2002.
OPPURE:
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass/Foglie d'Erba (1855), a cura di Alessandro Ceni, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2015.
— Langston Hughes, “I, too” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47558/i-too).
— Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47660/a-supermarket-in-california).
--Franco Moretti, "Walt Whitman o Charles Baudelaire?", in Un paese lontano. Cinque Lezioni sulla cultura americana, Torino, Einaudi, 2019, pp. 27-48.

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.
-- Sara Antonelli, "Maschere e potere in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl di Harriet Jacobs", in Acoma 13 (primavera 1998), pp. 100-13, http://www.acoma.it/sites/default/files/pdf-articoli/13antonelli.pdf

Three Negro Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folks, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, New York, Avon Books, 1999 ISBN: 978-0380015818.
-- W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
---- The Forethought
---- Our Spiritual Strivings (Cap. I)
---- On Mr. Booker T. Washington And Others (Cap. III)
---- On the Meaning of Progress (Cap. IV)
---- Of the Wings of Atlanta (Cap. V).
---- Of the Passing of the First-Born (Cap. XI)
---- Of the Coming of John (Cap. XIII)
---- Of the Sorrow Songs (Cap. XIV)
---- The After-Thought.
-- Stuart Hall, "Tearing Down the Veil", The Guardian, Feb 22, 2003.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview30

F. Scott Fitzgerald
-- The Great Gatsby, edited by David Alworth, New York, Norton, 2021, ISBN: 978-0-393-54016-1
OR
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925), edited by Tony Tanner, New York, Oxford UP, 2000, ISBN: 978-0141182636
-- Sara Antonelli, "Landscape with a Tragic Hero: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Trimalchio", in The Great Gatsby, edited by David Alworth, pp. 499-518; originally published as Sara Antonelli, "Landscape with a Tragic Hero: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Trimalchio", F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 13 (2015), pp. 55-75 (Catalogo elettronico di Roma Tre).

Octavia Butler
-- Kindred (1979), New York, Hachette Collections, 978-1472258229

N.B. Students who are not able to attend classes will study the same syllabus/books above.
Please, do buy/check out the editions indicated in the syllabus.