Analytic Investigation of the Rhythm and speed of Narration in the Novel of "The Empty Place of Salouch"

Mahmood Dowlatabadi is one of the impressive Iranian novelists, especially in the area of climatic literature. "The empty place of Salouch" is his first novel. This novel deserves an extensive investigation in different aspects such as linguistic and literary features, sociological and anthropological studies, and narratology. In the present study, the speed of narration in the novel of "The empty place of Salouch" (through using Jerar Janet’s narratological theory) and the factors which have had a great influence on that have been investigated. The narrative speed and rhythm are one of the most significant components in narration, also one of the most important elements in the form of the plot. The concept of narrative speed reveals how long it has taken for the actions and events to take place in a literary work and regarding this time juncture how much of the book is devoted to them. In most parts of "The empty place of Salouch", the speed is negative, and the narrative speed is slow; but the narrative speed in the whole novel (the main narration) is average since the narrative speed’s increasing and reducing components in this novel are used in a balanced manner, and this feature has caused the adjustment of speed in the whole novel. In fact, the novelist has used certain strategies to increase the motion and to compensate for the lack of motion and the low speed of narration in some parts of the novel. Therefore, this novel, in spite of its low narrative speed, is full of motion, excitement, dynamism and movement, fright and apprehension, and internal and external conflicts. In other words, this novel has a low rhythm and fast dynamism. Hence, this study is an attempt to examine the strategies that the novelist has deployed to increase the motion and dynamism of the narration besides the narrative speed and the factors influencing on that.