Analyzing the Speed of the Novel's Narration in Tarigh Besmel Shodan by Dovlatabadi's based on Gérard Genet's Narratology

Narrative speed is a structural and important element in the formation of stories and novels, which is considered as one of the important and main aspects in the narrative of novels. Gerard Genet (1930-2018), a French theorist and semiotician, dedicates a short piece of text to a long period of time. The story is called positive speed and its opposite is called negative speed. The subject of the novel is the development of Mahmoud Dovlatabadi's work in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, which is presented in a complex style and context, using mythological elements, various historical intertextualities, historical relations between Arabs and Iranians, etc. It has become a field of writing. The present essay is a reading that explains the speed of the narrative in this novel based on Gennet's theory with a documentary-description method to answer the question that which of the elements of the speed of the narrative has crystallized in this work according to Gennet's theory? The obtained result shows that there is no balance in the factors of slowing down and speeding up in the novel, but the heavy burden of slowing down the text, due to historical intertextuality, etc., constantly engages the reader in unraveling knots and mental conflicts, so that with more meditation and to understand the real meaning of the novel by referring to history and other works.