AMERICAN LITERATURE 1 MOD. 1

Corso avanzato di Letteratura Anglo-Americana che fornisce agli studenti l’opportunità di sviluppare idee originali e di applicarle in un contesto di studio e ricerca specifico. Il corso intende stimolare lo sviluppo di capacità analitiche e critiche di analisi del testo e contestualizzazione letteraria di livello avanzato, favorendo l’integrazione delle conoscenze già in possesso e incentivando una modalità di studio il più possibile indipendente e autonoma.

The course will study a selection of 20th-century narrative poems, providing an overview of an important, if sometimes undervalued, tradition in American literature. The focus will be on major poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, James Merrill and A. E. Stallings. Students will be expected to show detailed knowledge of the works in question, and to develop their own independent analyses of the works, paying attention not only to thematic issue but also to questions of style and technique, and considering the relations between the various works and the literary and historical context in which they were created.

Conoscenza generale della storia della letteratura anglo-americana. Competenze in analisi letteraria. C1 livello in inglese.

We will consider the background history of narrative poetry in American literature and then study key texts by the five poets in the programme. Most of the course will be devoted to close analysis of the works, paying attention not only to thematic contents but also to questions of style, register, structure and imagery. Students will be expected to have some familiarity with metrical schemes (an extra lesson will be provided on this subject for those students unfamiliar with it).
A complete list of the poems to be studied will be found on the "Moodle" platform.

Bibliografia primaria:
Robert Frost: COLLECTED POEMS, PROSE AND PLAYS. Library of America.
Elizabeth Bishop: COLLECTED POEMS AND PROSE. Library of America.
Anthony Hecht: THE VENETIAN VESPERS. Oxford U.P.
James Merrill: THE COLLECTED POEMS. Random House.
A. E. Stallings: LIKE. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bibliografia secondaria:
Steven P.Schneider (Ed.): The Contemporary Narrative Poem: Critical Crosscurrents. University of Iowa Press, 2012. (Selection of essays)
A detailed list of the poems to be studied will be provided on the Moodle platform.

L’esame finale intende verificare il raggiungimento di un livello avanzato nella conoscenza e comprensione dei testi in programma, la capacità di discutere questioni letterarie con un linguaggio appropriato, l’autonomia di giudizio nell’analisi dei testi.

Please see the Moodle page for the revised format of the exam made necessary by the Covid crisis.

scritto

Lezioni frontali e discussioni