Narrative Time in Don Quijote From Parody to Paradigm

The season of summer, light and heat, long days, allow for freedom of movement; no turn of the weather or climate, windstorm, rain, no inclemency, can interrupt or threaten the protagonist's aim or the narrator's sense of timing or his story line. Primera Salida: at dawn in the countryside, "antes del día... de los calurosos del mes de julio..." the protagonist finds imaginative release from his choleric nature, sexual ardor and sexual repression, in a series of invocations: to his lady, future historian, horse-companion; at the end of this uneventful day, he finds an inn and an innkeeper who satisfies his wish to be dubbed a knight according to his illusion. The second sally follows in the month of August; tracing a similar but much expanded action, a going forth with heightened expectations, from the attack on the windmills, combat with the Basque to freeing the galley slaves; then reversal that obliges a retreat into the wilds of Sierra Morena and the turning point,-the love letter to Dulcinea and Sancho's trip to El Toboso; the appearance of secondary characters, Cardenio, Dorotea, and the rest; the ruse and artifice of Micomicona to turn the course of adventure homeward, the sequence of days and nights at the inn; the uproar over the "Helmet of Mambrino"; the hoax of enchanted knight riding in a cart encaged finally arrival back in the village, a public scene on a Sunday at noon. [...]the time sense of the characters in the story, above all Quijote, whose illusion is to revive chivalry by imitating literary models.