Knight-Errantry of the Twentieth Century in Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote (Critical Essay‪)‬

ABSTRACT The article presents Graham Greene's 1982 Monsignor Quixote as a continuation of romance tradition. It demonstrates how the familiar motif of a quest undertaken by a chivalric knight errant organising the plot of the medieval genre, which conventionally revolved around the questions of truth and virtue, has been transformed by the modern novel to express the dilemmas concerning the place of spirituality in the materialist worldview of capitalism. Thus, in a series of comic adventures the titular Monsignor and his companion Zanca, a Marxist mayor, appear to be the last knights-errant, believing in either the divine design of the world or justice respectively. Their views, however, prove to be so incongruous with the reality that they are considered as sheer madness. The modern travesty of the medieval motif of quest only proves how the transformed ideology of the post-medieval times has enforced adjustments in the romance formula, which has survived in the novel, and which are accountable for its inherent parodic streak. The romance heroes with their spiritual values can but cut tragicomic figures in the modern world.