ABSTRACT
In Doré’s drawing, “Don Quixote in His Library,” Quixote wields his sword and book amid a room cluttered with visions. A dragon worms its way under his tall wooden chair. The fringe of the thick drapes swirls into the wild locks of an enormous head that watches two mice scurry across the floor, each mounted by an armored rider. A medieval damsel smiles coyly on the window sill, and behind Don Quixote’s seated figure stampedes an army of knights on muscled, frenzied horses. Books, as master illustrator Doré understood so well, are no dull, intellectual pastime for Quixote. They transform his everyday existence to the fantastic. The boundary between reality and the dense, fierce world of his imagination dissolves.
