The Detective & the Knight Errant

An English professor once told me that Don Quixote is and will always be the most influential text of all time, with exception only to the Bible (conveinently utilized in City of Glass, as well). Since my professor made this claim four years ago, I have only been pleasantly surprised that he just might be correct.

Expanding on Katlyn and Ben's posts concerning outside references, I'd like to address the Don Quixote link that is given so much attention on pages 92-93 of the novel. Kuhlman brings up Don Quixote in her attention to the metanarrative of City of Glass and summarizes how Don Quixote is a comment on authorship. While this is undoubtedly true, addressing metanarrative only scratches the surface of the vast implications that Don Quixote has on the graphic novel. In Cervantes' text, Don Quixote's adventures are primarily the result of two factors: 1) DQ has read so many stories of chivalry that he turns his reality into an adventure where he is the protagonist (i.e. the knight errant) where 2) his main objective in his adventures is to win the hand of the lady Dulcinea (who never actually appears in Don Quixote and thus is largely thought to be imagined). Simarily, the protagonist in City of Glass, Daniel Quinn, writes so many mysteries that he easily takes on the role of the detective. He then drives himself to carry this role through with visions of winning Mrs. Stillman's affection (26.3, 60.2-9). In light of the Don Quixote connection, this only adds to the claim that Quinn isn't alive or sane himself, as Mrs. Stillman is perhaps, like the lady Dulcinea, imagined.

It's also interesting to note how Daniel Quinn and Don Quixote's names are linked through similarities in the letters, syllables and sounds in their names. The frames that zoom-in on Quinn's notebooks (36.9 and 129.7) comment on the interchangeability of their identities, suggesting that further study of Daniel Quinn should be done through Don Quixote - not only in terms of the metanarrative of the text, but in regards to who the characters are themselves.