Happy the age, happy the time
Don Quixote“Happy the age, happy the time” is Don Quixote’s exuberant salute to the future moment when his imagined fame will be recorded. The phrase turns an ordinary first journey into the opening of a legendary history, revealing how completely he understands his life through the language and expectations of chivalric books.
Context
As Don Quixote rides across Campo de Montiel, he imagines a sage chronicler describing his departure in grand, ornate language. He then celebrates the age in which his deeds will become known and preserved in brass, marble, and pictures. The boast comes before he has met anyone on whom to test his strength; the gap between the monumental memorial he imagines and the modest journey under way gives the moment its comic force.
Rhetorical Function
The balanced repetition of “Happy” makes the line sound like a public acclamation, while its sweeping confidence belongs to the heroic history Don Quixote is composing in his mind. His imagined fame also depends on a chronicler: he asks that writer to remember Rocinante, his companion on the road. The passage thus makes the first sally both an adventure and a performance of adventure, with Don Quixote already supplying the elevated language through which he hopes it will be remembered.
