More poems by Emily Dickinson

Below you may see the first lines of the poems by Emily Dickison which we'll analyze in class, next Friday. You may find the complete poems in the Internet.

"Much madness is divinest sense"http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182156
"He ate and drank the precious words"http://www.bartleby.com/113/1021.html
"The past is such a curious creature"http://www.bartleby.com/113/1128.html

Poems by Emily Dickinson

In class, we'll read and analize the following poems:
"Success is counted sweetest" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/success-is-counted-sweetest/
"Heaven is what I cannot reach" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/heaven-mdash-is-what-i-cannot-reach/
"Hope is the thing with feathers" http://www.online-literature.com/dickinson/827/

ASSIGNMENT 2 (Due Sept. 7th) Thoreau and his experiment at Walden Pond

Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists regarded Nature as a source of wisdom, purity, and life. Considered by many an extremist, a genius by others, a true representative of the Romantic spirit and, above all, of the so deeply American value of individualism, his account of the 2-year experience in the woods near Walden Pond remains one of the freshest, most true-to-life while consciously artistic 19th-century literary pieces.

Assignment 2 Read the chapter "Where I Lived and What I Lived for" looking for instances in which Thoreau tells readers about his experience, and instances of the message / suggestions / pieces of advice / general thoughts he gives. Then, concentrate on his aesthetic use of language: How does he create beauty thorugh language? Go over the text again, and choose your favorite phrase or sentence, the one in which you find a powerful message expressed in a beautiful language.Then, start writing the assignment, abot Thoreau's impact thorugh this text. In the first body paragraph, you should refer to the didactic / pedagogical implications of the text. In the second paragraph, to the asthetic effect of the text. In your conclusion, you can synthesize Thoreau's contribution as reflected in your favorite phrase. Printed version due on Monday,  SEPTEMBER 7TH

Rounding off Huck Finn

As you finish reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, pay special attention to Huck's development. How does he grow up? That is, why can we say that the novel is a bildungsroman?
What turnign point can we find in chapter XXXI?
Some critics have found the ending disappointing, somehow disconnected from the style of the rest of the book. What do you think about this?What does the book say about major thesmes such as friendship, growing up, multicultural/inter-ratial relations?

Mark Twain and the Mississippi River

In this compact course of ours, we have had time to read a few chapters only from one of Mark Twain's books. Yet, his genius, magnificent use of language, the aural quality of his dialogues, the imaginative worlds he creates based on his personal knowledge of the "ante-bellum" South, his wit and the ironic views of his own dear America, as seen in his diaries, novels, and short stories deserve that eventually, you devote some more time to reading Twain's books. Usually considered as teenage novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will delight anyone interested in the varieties and dialects of American English. The latter of these two books, especially, is one of the "classics" (to use Calvino's notions) which can be read -or re read- by grown ups only to discover the beauty of language, friendship, generosity and freedom. (We have discussed the notion of incorporating books into a canon; yet, this implies leaving some outside the canon, or even banning them. This is what happened to Huck Finn after the attack on the Twin Towers ten years ago. Read it and discover why an "American classic" was banned by Americans themselves!)

One of Twain's pervading images, and symbols, is the Mississippi river. You may consult a dictionary of symbols to understand the full implications of waterways, but in this case, it is not "any" river: it is the Mississippi. A mighty river that runs from Minnesota into the Mexican Gulf for over 3700 km. Both in his fiction and non-fiction, Twain gives a central role to the Mississippi.

Edgar Allan Poe. "The Raven"

The poem "The Raven may be read at

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178713
The essay "The Philosophy of Composition" can be found at
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poetics-essay/237848 

"The Raven" is a beautiful, musical, complex poem that can be read accompanied by Poe's own words in "The Philosophy of Composition", which throws light into the poetic text.

The diction, rhyme (both internal and external -at the end of lines), repetitions and alliterations, the refrain in the last line of each stanza, are some of the procedures that Poe used to convey a strong musicality. We should also consider that the poetic persona is obssessed, and transmits this state of mind through the repetitions, and the overwhelming presence of the black raven.

All these issues contribute to the creation of effect, one of the main topics in the essay "The Philosophy of Composition".
Below you may find a short reading guide to concentrate on the central aspects of the essay:

“The Philosophy of Composition”

-Study Guide-

As an introduction

1.       What do most writers , especially poets, think about their own composition?

2.       What will Poe exemplify in the essay with his poem “The Raven”?

Poe’s own comments on “The Raven”

→Extent (length):

→Province of the Poem:

→Tone:

→Refrain: (application, nature and character)

→Topic:

→Climax:

→Locale:

→Denouement:

As a conclusion…

Which is Poe’s first metaphorical expression in the poem? What does it suggest?

Thoreau and the Transcendentalists

ASSIGNMENT Nº 1

You may find the instructions for assignment n. 1 in the link below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABpZ0dCxHDCkzawMZaGd7DpywrSt-SqQQJFjfZsNzmE/pub

Echoes of Frederick Douglass, an African American Writer

Frederick Douglss' Narrative of the Life... is a crucial text to understand not only his life, but slavery, and the painful conditions in which a whole race lived for centuries. His book is not only a narrative, as the title puts it, but also an argument against slavery, written while most African Americans were unable to enjoy the equality and freedom preached by the American Declaration of Independence. Most slaves were denied an education (together with an identity, clothing, food, fair treatment, and other basic human rights). Yet, they developed a body of oral literature, in which music and songs were a central part. At the end of chapter 2 of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he makes a reference to slaves' singing and its meaning.

Those songs have survived, both as literature and as music, as a testimony to that hard life. In assignment 1, we will work with the echoes of that music, as reflected in a literary form (poems by Langston Hughes).

African American History