A Research On The Narrative Speed Of Italo Calvino

Calvino summarized the value, nature and characteristics of literature in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Combining with his experience of reading, thinking and creation, he proposed Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity as the basic literature direction in next thousand years. This paper studies mainly on Quickness.The first section is the relationship between narrative speed and Calvino’s quickness. Firstly, this paper illustrates concepts related with narrative time in literature. Narrative speed is the ratio of paper length and story time, authors could control narrative speed of a novel through Pause, Slow-down, Scene, Summary and Ellipsis. As to Calvino’s theory, Quickness is quick narrative speed, it related to narrative time; narration should be quick; Plot, language, concise, logical, and rhythm all contributes to Quickness; Quickness connects to human mind and the accumulation of content is the premise of Quickness. The narration of isochronism is the starting line of Calvino’s narrative speed, and the narration of acceleration is the principal part of it.The second section is the implementation of Calvino’s Quickness. Calvino implemented Quickness through three approaches. The first one is concise language, manageable three-piece construction and the length of short story under the influence of folk stories. The second is nonlinear narrative and space narrative. Calvino transforms his most concentrated and essence thought to the short nonlinear text of Time Zero. Transferring nonlinear narrative to the crystal structure of space narrative, he implemented infinite narrative time based on the limited text. The third approach is the encyclopedic open narrative. Multidisciplinary encyclopedia enriches the content, subsystems generate centrifugal by interaction, therefore the structure and content gains open property of self-generating. As the final recipient and creator, readers participate in the creation of works and extend the story time.The third section is the function and enlightenment of Quickness. By open narrative, Calvino eliminates author’s omnipotence, deconstructing the author as a character in the text. Thus readers could understand and recreate the textual world in their own way. In the meantime, under the impact of decentration as a postmodernist, Calvino deconstructed the unified gist by nonlinear narrative and space narrative. Widen and deepen the connotation of stories, the text becomes increasingly rich and diverse with the explanation and supplement of readers. In the end, Quickness also serves for Calvino’s core principle Lightness, transferring heaviness to lightness through eliminating the weight of heaviness.