Letteratura Americana

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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

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oral traditions ORAL (not diffuse, mostly Native American) + WRITTEN LITERATURE

→ maps = projections of people’s thoughts about places (particularly when they had

cartography →

never been there) they were symbolic

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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 stared 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 portoguese 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

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fr canada + northeast + midwest

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spa west mississippi + south oregon + florida + south tennessee

→ spanish adventurer Cabeza de Vaca travelled from Florida

1st literature was in Spanish

to Mexico, across Texas, lived with NatAm / had an African American with him, who was a

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free man 1st free african in America

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eng (stuarts) colonization prospective many expedition to gather information about this new

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world / captain john smith james 1 sent 2 companies of adventurers to america to found 1st

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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 et people to come to Am with advertisement

phrases (“Am is the new Jerusalem”)

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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: → William Bradford, recollected history of colony / magnified how

1. HISTORIOGRAPHY →

successful the mission had been + censored numerous deaths / the “visible saints”

everyone could see how successful they had been + being successful = being saint

→ writing in 1st person, no narcissistic reason as it had to document day by

2. AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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 id

you pur up a moral example

→ connected with autobiographies / solid expression of thinking, context always had a

3. POETRY

connection with religion

→ fragments that resemble it when they imagine what’s behind things they were

4. FICTION

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)

Colombus 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. (Emundo Ogorman) invention of america keeps together the readout of the discovery +

relates the idea of a continent with better stuff

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

NAMING PROCESS

• →

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

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• Amerigo Vespucci is the 1st to touch the continent (Columbus only toughed Venezuela) it’s

not historically provable/verifiable + he wasn’t a captain of any expedition, just a low class sailor.

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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

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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

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writer/more convincing it’s an aesthetic discovery, mode about literary style/quality then

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 VESPUCCI

natAm: naked / fearful / shy / no religion / natAm: uses elements of the myth of the

• •

cannibals (never witnessed it) “good wilding” (someone we can easily deal with

+ cannibals (goes

because we are superior)

into details/gore + says he has seen them)

sexuality: looked for similarities, was more sexuality: women luxurious + sexy, thinks

• • →

formative about male audience a lot of editions

were censored / explains how eu are

favorited by natAm women / uses

suspence / refers to people in his age,

even fiction writers, to keep together facts

and fiction (~ Il Milione, Marco Polo)

Colombus: 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 an half imagined character + real author)

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PASSAGE OF INFO/KNOWLEDGE not direct, made through:

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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 (•••)

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b. translators most are just adaptation

How the puritans discovered America, Bercovitch • epub: mandatory ref

transcription of a conference in Bologna / puritan legacy

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realm of rhetorics a lot of linguists started to examine the words of our modern presidents’

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speeches and found out a lot of them use puritan american words in moment of crisis they go

back to puritan american language

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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

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literature of the new world literature of propaganda + seduction to make eu come

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“us vs them” difference with the other + self-justification for dominium/genocidal right

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us identity/culture come from the most part from puritan colonies in new england sermons /

orations / essays / diaries / memoirs / stories / almanacs / poetries / biographies / autobiographies

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puritans wanted to come back to a pure, calvinistic religious community (after separation

between church of rome and england)

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pilgrim fathers pilgrimage (makes people more saint) / crossing of the atlantic ocean as a

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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

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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

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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

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1st governor + historian William Bradford

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doctrinal/political literature invention wasn’t important

→ simple lexis + syntax, sometimes with figuration

PLAIN STYLE

→ →

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

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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

mrs. mary rowlandson 1635

NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY AND RESTORATION OF MRS. MARY ROWLANDSON

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

1675 / story told th