Américanité e québécité a confronto. Sulla strada del "roman de la route"

The aim of this study is a terminological, historical, mythical and literary analysis on Américanité – Quebec Americaness – through the literary example of some “romans de la route”, that is Quebec road novels. It goes over both its seemingly tautology, its status of “concept poubelle” - “dustbin conceit”- and “fourre-tout” - “thematic muddle”-, in order to highlight Americaness as the main identity topic of Quebec as well as of all the other American collectivities. It stresses its sense of rupture, release and its political, ideological, mythical and literary outdistances either from the genetic European models or the influent American patterns. It rapidly introduces the continuity of the “Nouvelle-France” with its French models, the comings and goings between continuity and discontinuity of French Canada with its “Survivance”, till the prominent rupture of contemporary Quebec with its “Quiet Revolution” and its referendums for secession. The paper wants to prove that alterity, hybridity, cosmopolitism and transculturalism are the main aspects of an “alternative” Americanity which the only Francophone Province of Canada is basically trying to obtain for the last thirty years: from the example of the Latin-American “americanidad” to the first recognition of its “américanitude” and its “québécitude”, until the current assertion of its “québécité”. These identity features are greatly represented by some of the last thirty years most important Quebec road novels: De quoi t’ennuies-tu Éveline? by Gabrielle Roy, Volkswagen blues by Jacques Poulin, Petit homme tornade by Roch Carrier, Le voyageur distrait by Gilles Archambault, Vendredi-Friday and Heureux qui comme Ulysse by Alain Poissant, Les faux fuyants by Monique LaRue, Carnets de naufrage and Chercher le vent by Guillaume Vigneault are the novels which show better, in Quebec postmodern literature, the historical, political and mythical routes of Quebec Americanity, moving to a “LatinAmericanity” or even a “Transamericanity”. These novels and their authors cross over the American Myth of the “mouvance” – both the mouvement, the nomadism and the influence of USA culture -, the myth of the Newness, the myth of the edenic happiness and harmony, as well as the myth of the Self-Made Man, that is the American dream of the material success. Through the hybridity of road book and road movie styles, languages and contents, the study shows these road novels deconstruct, de-mythify and criticize USA world, in order to claim Quebec cultural difference among the multiple continental americanities. Therefore, they issue Quebec outdistance from USA economical and globalizing Americanism, to catch its best cultural and literary models, in order to reconstruct their own Myth, Literature, and their own endogenous, alternative and sharing Americaness. [edited by Author]