Letteratura Americana

1st inhabitants: nomads, Asian origins

Native Americans never used written words, but literature is considered mostly written. [In Arizona people are big on Native American culture [Kiva (cave) where elderly would unite / they would stay closed for days / there / only nowadays is no written record / even now tribes keep meeting like that, passing on the tradition orally]]

NatAm have started producing written literature + historians started confronting official records with → oral traditions. Oral (not diffuse, mostly Native American) + written literature.

Maps and the discovery of America

→ Maps = projections of people’s thoughts about places (particularly when they had cartography → never been there) they were symbolic.

→ EU Middle Age world had 3 parts: EU + Africa + Asia / center: Jerusalem [3 symbol of perfection].

→ Discovery that the world had 4 parts: tough cultural passage, it took time to accept there was something else. During plagues/epidemics, people started believing in a different / → → better world, legends/myths about the East, Marco Polo, Il Milione.

• Vikings travelled to Iceland, Eng, Canada + some historians think they’ve been to Florida. They weren’t (stanziale) though, more like pirates and they weren’t cartographers as they didn’t want to control territory (and maps were useful for that).
• Controversial material: 1421 China discovered Am / they were so powerful they built a fleet of 100+ boats to sail out of China. They left signs in Australia + there were maps of America but it’s not sure if those were real →
• California in some maps is an island, in others a peninsula: evolution.
• Portolans (nautical maps) show America before 1492 → →
• 1507 Martin Waldseemüller map: 1st time the name America appears on a map; only southern America was detailed / Spanish and Portuguese didn’t use the name America but called it West Indies (now used for Caribbean’s Islands).

~ → Hope of EU people with crisis / utopian world / mental disposition / spiritual reality.

New world → what is “literary” seen =/= idealized landscape, the wonder.

→ Fr: Canada + northeast + Midwest.

→ Spa: west Mississippi + south Oregon + Florida + south Tennessee.

→ Spanish adventurer Cabeza de Vaca travelled from Florida to Mexico, across Texas, lived with NatAm / had an African American with him, who was a → free man: 1st free African in America.

1st literature was in Spanish.

→ Eng (Stuarts) colonization prospective: many expedition to gather information about this new → world / Captain John Smith. James 1 sent 2 companies of adventurers to America to found 1st → colony.

1607: Jamestown, Virginia (→ most famous: Pocahontas).

1607 American literature in English.

Puritan times

~1650-1750.

Important thinkers (EU thinking/Illuminismo passed on to Am).

• EU: French Revolution 1789 / America 1776, very similar.
• → 1600 literature written for pleasure/entertainment wasn’t allowed, was prohibited. Writers couldn’t invent characters, pleasure in writing wasn’t considered viable. A lot of written words were communications between Pilgrim Fathers and EU. They wanted manpower (to help set up civilization, naming, commercial aspect), so tried to get people to come to Am with advertisement phrases (“Am is the new Jerusalem”).

→ Clash of dimension: giant dimension of nature in Am, continent empty and wild.

• → Am “virgin land”: male EU and female Am.
• Graphic artist were recruited to go to missions to show visually what happened.
• Most women writers during Puritan age were literate.

Genres

1. Historiography → William Bradford, recollected history of colony / magnified how successful the mission had been + censored numerous deaths / the “visible saints”: everyone could see how successful they had been + being successful = being saint.
2. Autobiography → Writing in 1st person, no narcissistic reason as it had to document day by day the writer’s relation to God / they had to be story of religion/moral enhancement / sons started writing their fathers’ diaries + writing their own in parallel / could be published only if you put up a moral example.
3. Poetry → Connected with autobiographies / solid expression of thinking, context always had a connection with religion.
4. Fiction → Fragments that resemble it when they imagine what’s behind things they were fascinated about / real fiction was explored later, at 1st they always justified themselves: they pretended to be writing true facts.

La conquête de l’Amerique, Todorov

(essay / 1984)

• Columbus touches Am, doesn’t really discover it. He sailed 4 times across the Pacific Ocean but only on the 3rd time he made landfall. He reached Venezuela, saw 3 rivers and thought he was in heaven → word discovery: history of America only starts when EU discover it.
• Eurocentric vision.

Historians not use =/= terms:

1. Invasion: NatAm used word, implies =/= way of thinking.
2. Conquest →
3. (Edmundo O’Gorman) invention of America keeps together the readout of the discovery + relates the idea of a continent with better stuff.

Naming process

→ At 1st EU thought it was a 2nd EU (ex. New York, New England) / naming.

• → Process: symbolic renovation of “old” EU / adjective “new” frequent / America replicates in a positive way everything that was negative in EU.

Perché diciamo America, Todorov

(essay / 1991)

• Epub: mandatory ref →
• Amerigo Vespucci is the 1st to touch the continent (Columbus only touched Venezuela); it’s not historically provable/verifiable + he wasn’t a captain of any expedition, just a low class sailor.

→ Todorov: merit to Vespucci: it was an intellectual discovery. In 1503 Vespucci writes a letter, Mondo Novos, that gets published right away, and then will get republished later on with Martin Waldseemüller map attached. Another letter of his got published, 4 Navigationes: Amerigo was → convinced he had found a new world. According to Todorov it’s important that he said (with proofs) that. Back then there were objections, as Pietro Martire said in 1493 that Columbus had found new land, but Columbus was an adversary of himself, as he started doubting he had found Orient.

• In the letters everyone said the same thing. Vespucci’s was chosen because he was a better → writer/more convincing: it’s an aesthetic discovery, more about literary style/quality than content. →
• Importance of literacy: Vespucci wants to entertain people, wants info to be clear and understandable, gives summaries of what he writes, uses elements of metacommunication (ex. “in order for you reader to better understand,”) and diagrams. Tells the reader what he’s going to find in his letters (~ promos, trailers).
• Columbus wrote for himself =/= Amerigo wrote for the audience (split between the author/narrator and the person who has seen/lived the physical experience).
• Selection of topics.

Columbus and Vespucci

Columbus / Vespucci.

• NatAm: naked / fearful / shy / no religion / cannibals (never witnessed it).
• NatAm: uses elements of the myth of the “good wilding” (someone we can easily deal with because we are superior) + cannibals (goes into details/gore + says he has seen them).
• Sexuality: looked for similarities, was more formative about male audience.
• Sexuality: women luxurious + sexy, thinks → a lot of editions were censored / explains how EU are favorited by NatAm women / uses suspense / refers to people in his age, even fiction writers, to keep together facts and fiction (~ Il Milione, Marco Polo).

Columbus: man of the Middle Ages =/= Vespucci: man of the Renaissance.

→ At the end of the narration uses tricks, says he’s gonna travel and write more / doesn’t promise truth in writing, only takes responsibility for his narration.

• In the end Todorov is critical of Vespucci, says he’s a half imagined character + real author.

→ Passage of info/knowledge not direct, made through:

→ a. Informants: a lot of info doesn’t correspond to the reality of the culture, but are interpretations of what the person wanted to be told (•••).

→ b. Translators: most are just adaptation.

How the Puritans discovered America, Bercovitch

Epub: mandatory ref.

Transcription of a conference in Bologna / Puritan legacy.

→ Realm of rhetorics: a lot of linguists started to examine the words of our modern presidents’ speeches and found out a lot of them use Puritan American words; in moment of crisis they go back to Puritan American language.

→ Squanto effect (•••): cultural shock some Puritan settlers felt upon meeting Indian Squanto who had just come back from Eng and could talk English / shocking to EU because part of the myth of the good wilding meant they weren’t smart enough to do that.

→ EU could only count on words to get to know something that is unknown to it: voyages reports + long lists of details become crucial.

Accent on sensorial experience + sense of alienation.

→ Literature of the new world: literature of propaganda + seduction to make EU come.

→ “Us vs them”: difference with the other + self-justification for dominium/genocidal right.

→ US identity/culture come for the most part from Puritan colonies in New England: sermons / orations / essays / diaries / memoirs / stories / almanacs / poetries / biographies / autobiographies.

→ Puritans wanted to come back to a pure, Calvinistic religious community (after separation between Church of Rome and England).

→ Pilgrim Fathers: pilgrimage (makes people more saint) / crossing of the Atlantic Ocean as a → symbolic baptismal ritual of purification.

Mayflower (1620, published only in 1856).

Mayflower compact

→ Not the first expedition / Pilgrim Fathers: 1st expedition that mixed together religious + business → aspects (Puritans + non Puritans) / 66 days big adventure, didn’t reach the coast they had contracted for → symbolic crossing of the ocean.

Chronicle/testimony of the colony from the start to 1647 / harsh survival / stylistic model: Bible.

Pilgrim + Puritans signed a contract because Cape Cod (Massachusetts) wasn’t where they were supposed to arrive / original document is lost.

→ They managed to survive thanks to NatAm: Squanto effect, spoke Eng to them, taught them how to seed the area.

→ Pilgrim Fathers are considered the founders of Am, but it’s all thanks to literature: it’s a myth.

• Rhetoric adventure “in the name of God/glory” → religious culture.

→ 1st governor + historian William Bradford.

→ Doctrinal/political literature: invention wasn’t important.

→ Plain style → simple lexis + syntax, sometimes with figuration.

→ 1636 first originally unit of University of Harvard / 1639 1st print house in Cambridge.

→ Autobiographism + conversion narratives: importance of the “self” as an exemplum, fidelity to religious/spiritual tradition more important than truth.

Pilgrimage as functional metaphor for the story of human life, in particular when this becomes Bildungsroman / conversion processes that can become redemption processes.

Narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Mrs. Mary Rowlandson 1635.

Anthropological observation of the “other” / full immersion into aborigine culture.

1675 / story told th