Acceso usuarios
Rosilie Hernández-Pecoraro
En el imaginario popular, lo quijotesco frecuentemente se asocia con la posibilidad absoluta de realizar sueños, de triunfar frente a toda adversidad, y de crear nuevas realidades independientemente de las circunstancias que nos rodean. Esta lectura ha sido fomentada por la recepción general del musical Man of la Mancha. El presente ensayo arguye por una interpretación de lo quijotesco en Don Quijote y Man of la Mancha donde la alienación que subyace la modernidad secular es entendida como fundamental, haciendo sólo posible la identificación empática con el otro en un mundo caracterizado por la desilusión y la pobreza trascendental.
Popular culture engagement with Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote often mirrors longstanding academic debates on whether the eponymous knight errant was a hero or a fool in his appropriation of a chivalric code of behavior, or what has also been called a soft versus hard reading of his quest and the text. Reflecting these same parameters, the category of the quixotic or quijotesco is often deployed to describe those who adamantly pursue their dreams against real or imagined antagonist forces. Quixotic endeavors most often denote the heroic, so much so that one is hard-pressed to read the New York Times, the New Yorker, or El País without regularly encountering the Cervantine reference ascribed to individuals or entities whose inspiring projects are celebrated as a source of hope for the readers. Less often and closer to the interpretation of Don Quixote as a fool, the charge of quixotic madness or imprudent persistence makes itself equally useful when describing the wayward efforts of social, political, and cultural actors
