Decostruire il mito. Jewishness e Americanness nei romanzi di Philip Roth

This paper aims to analyze how the American Jewish author Philip Roth (1933-2018) confronts the burden of his ethnic origin and, at the same time, problematizes the question of Americanness. In the novels of the American Trilogy (1997-2000), Roth highlights the implications of this double identity by creating characters who strenuously work to erase their religious and ethnic origins to fulfill their American Dream. This paper focuses on the author’s use of one of the founding myths of American democracy, individualism, and the many different ways through which Roth builds and celebrates this myth as he simultaneously aims at deconstructing it.