RT Generic T1 The road in American literature and film Jack Kerouac's Legacy A1 Estévez Benítez, Natalia K1 Literatura americana K1 Literatura e cine K1 Jack Kerouac AB The road has been an enduring icon of American history and culture from the accounts of the first settlers to present-day literature, including frontier narratives. The nation was built upon social and spatial mobility: the American dream about prosperity and improvement was accompanied by the long quests for a home of natives, pilgrims, settlers, pioneers, slaves or immigrants. This mixture gave birth to a particular sense of stability and independence that has stuck to American society. In that way, the conceptions of “identity” and “self-discovery” are almost inseparable from that of “journey”, as if the ultimate internal and social voyage could only be achieved through a physical one, in Ronald Primeau‟s words: “[w]hereas most travelers of old in pilgrimages or quest romances moved with deliberation toward goals, Americans were nomadic in their trust that the power of movement itself would bring happiness, success, and fulfillment” (18). Thus, we are able to realize how the road acquires a particular sensibility in the American context, separating their idea of mobility from –especially- the Europeans‟ one, becoming a sort of foundational myth YR 2014 FD 2014 LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/13114 UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/13114 LA eng NO Traballo Fin de Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas. Curso 2013-2014 DS Minerva RD 24 abr 2026