'El regreso de D. Quijote' de Chesterton. Tradición y utopía

Abstract

The Return of D. Quixote, 1926, consummates a stage in Chesterton's life that the critics have called the quixotic period. The departing point for this time period was an essay called The divine parody of D. Quixote (1901) in which the author interprets Cervantes' novel as a performance of the combat between idealism and realism. Sancho Panza portrays the image of the knight embodying common sense and opposed to certain madness that we have come to consider as normal in the world we live. This paradox had been already subject of a witty analysis in the utopian novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill of 1904. It is also explored in other relevant works like the poem entitled Lepanto of 1912. It is only in the Weekly's Review issues where D. Quixote becomes the advocate of the distributionist cause and the return to a medieval society as a symbol of the revival of the knight's virtuousness and of its inspiring prototype, the utopia of a Christian society.