The 9 credit course includes the following texts and topics:
The Puritan Age
-John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)
-Mary Rowlandson, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (First, Second, Third, Twelfth, and Twentieth Remove), (1682)
-Cotton Mather, “The Wonders of the Invisible World” (1692)
The Enlightenment in the United States
-The Declaration of Independence (1776)
-Hector De Crèvecoeur ‘What is an American’, from “Letters from an American Farmer” (1782)
- Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography” (1791-1868) pp. 254-269; 297-308 Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Eight Edition
The Nineteenth Century: Antebellum America and American Renaissance
-Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” (1845), “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
-Ralph W. Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837)
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1832), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844)
-Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
-Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)
-Walt Whitman, “Preface to Leaves of Grass”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1855)
-Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweetest”, “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”, "There is a certain Slant of light", "This is my letter to the World", “Because I could not stop for Death”, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant—”
Critical Bibliography:
-Norton Anthology of American Literature (Preferably the 8th Shorter Edition, or any other edition available in the library):
AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1700: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1700-1820: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1820-1865: Introduction and Timeline
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHORS IN THE SYLLABUS
-A Companion to the American Short Story, eds. A. Bendixen and J. Nagel, Malden, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010:
B. F. Fisher, “Poe and the American Short Story”, pp. 20-34
S. T. Ryan, “A Guide to Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’”, pp. 35-49
A. Bendixen, “Towards History and Beyond: Hawthorne and the American Short Story”, pp. 50-67
-Storia della civiltà letteraria degli Stati Uniti, vol. 1, a cura di E. Elliott, Torino, UTET, 1990:
S. Bercovitch, “La visione puritana del nuovo mondo”, pp. 28-37
K. Silverman, “Da Cotton Mather a Benjamin Franklin”, pp. 83-92
The 6 credit course includes the following texts and topics:
The Puritan Age
-John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)
-Mary Rowlandson, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (First, Second, Third, Twelfth, and Twentieth Remove), (1682)
The Enlightenment in the United States
-The Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography” (1791-1868) pp. 254-269; 297-308 Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Eight Edition
The Nineteenth Century: Antebellum America and American Renaissance
-Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
-Ralph W. Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837)
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1832), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)
-Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
-Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)
-Walt Whitman, “Preface to Leaves of Grass”, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1855)
-Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweetest”, “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”, "There is a certain Slant of light", "This is my letter to the World", “Because I could not stop for Death”, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant—”
Critical Bibliography:
-Norton Anthology of American Literature (Preferably the 8th Shorter Edition, or any other edition available in the library):
AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1700: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1700-1820: Introduction and Timeline
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1820-1865: Introduction and Timeline
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHORS IN THE SYLLABUS