ABSTRACT
Italian American literary history has been slow to assume canonic form. Most scholarly imaginations, strange to say, have proved themselves immune to the temptation to conjure. An understanding of Italian American literary history cannot begin without first making a survey of the range implied in each of its two component terms. Twenty or a hundred books may be bundled under one heading. The reader, beginning from these ten headings or points of reference, will be able to orient wide-ranging searches in the bibliography of Italian America as a literary subject. The remaining foundations are specific to Italian American literary history in the United States. A large underclass of peasants migrated to the Americas. In many places, particularly the eastern and midwestern United States, they entered a class system that had already appropriated most of the Italian foundations of American culture to its own uses. The American experiment has not confined its curiosities to political institutions.
