Don Quixote and the Anagogic and the WOO WOO

Northrop Frye writes in reference to anagogic criticism "When we pass into anagogy, nature becomes, not the container, but the thing contained, and the archetypal universal symbols, the city, the garden, the quest, the marriage, are no longer the desirable forms that man constructs inside nature, but are themselves the forms of nature" (Pg. 119).

While we find difficulty in arguing Frye's eloquence in conveying the nature of Anagogy, I find the argument for literature brought fourth by Don Quixote to refute the Cannon much more compelling and effective. The cannon believes that the nature of literature should be didactic and the imaginary writings of authors of fiction spread confusion and madness amongst the public. Don Quixote cunningly responds to the cannon by describing a character of one of these "imaginary" works.
-"Here he discovers a brook whose cool waters, like liquid crystal, run over fine sand and white pebbles that seem like sifted gold and perfect pearls; there he sees a fountain artfully composed of varicolored jasper and smooth marble; over there he sees another fountain fashioned as a grotto where tiny clamshells and the coiled white-and-yellow houses of the snail are arranged with the conscious disorder and mixed with the bits of shining glass and counterfeit emeralds, forming so varied a pattern that art, imitating nature, here seems to surpass it." (pg. 429)

Even as I typed Don Quixote's argument above my only reaction can be described by the word "wow" and the ever so slight chill trickling slowly up my spine causing all of the hairs of my body to do the wave like a giant crowd in the ballparks of the World Series cheering on the home team. The subtle implications of Don Quixote's argument precisely convey the idea of the Archetypal and Anagogic shift of his chivalric literature. The scene he paints reflects a valiant knight traveling in A place of unimaginable perfection and beauty, unquestionably a representation of Eden from the original myth of the christian faith. His description of this Eden and its vastly incomparable beauty becomes a realization of the Anagogic as the picturesque of the scene surpasses even its own incomparablity. While this completely tautological statement seems ridiculous, Don Quixote creates the anagogic by describing a natural place so mystifying it its beauty eclipses even that created by its inherent neutrality. Once again a somewhat confusing statement, yet a purposefully discourse in proving the superiority of Don Quixote's argument. Essentially by describing the archetypal and anagogic in relation to the novels of Chivalry he proves the existence of an element in this "imaginary" literature that by far exceeds the capabilities of the Cannon's "didactic" poetry.

I hope this little blurb makes sense. I wrote it more as the ideas zapped into my brain than by consciously arranging my argument. It is safe to say these two quotes thus far exceed any other connection between the texts we studied in creating a creepy understanding to the nature of this class and literature in general.