Narrative Slowness As Effect

Ella Mingazova is an independent scholar who lives in Belgium. She is a coeditor of Slow Narrative across Media.

"Questions of speed and acceleration have been central to our understanding of Western modernity and modernist or contemporary artistic practice. Calls for slowness, on the other hand, are often seen as anti-modernist, a melancholic yearning for the past, an elitist desire to pause progress for the primary benefit of those who can afford it. In her superbly argued Narrative Slowness as Effect, Ella Mingazova offers nuanced insights to derail such assumptions as she explores the generative nature of deceleration in literary practice. Mingazova's compelling readings and theoretical interventions move us beyond how previous scholars have discussed the representation of slowness in literature. The book instead highlights the formal techniques and strategies that recalibrate how we experience the temporality of reading and attend to time in the first place. Timely and incisive, Narrative Slowness as Effect offers a truly rewarding read, absolutely worth the time it takes to follow its paths."--Lutz Koepnick, author of On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary "Artificial intelligence and acceleration pose serious challenges to writing and reading. Against this backdrop, Narrative Slowness as Effect is not just about the experience of reading fiction but about the future of literature. The stakes couldn't be higher."--Roy Sommer, coeditor of Narrative in Culture "Ella Mingazova links her study of the effect of slowness in literary texts to a broader cultural predilection for speed. She successfully brings balance to an ongoing debate between 'slowness' and 'speed' and the valuation of both concepts by providing a historical context for contemporary issues. Moreover, the author successfully places her analyses in contemporary culture by highlighting slowness in today's popular 'fast' channels such as social media or streaming platforms. The study thus contributes to ongoing sociological and cultural discussions surrounding 'speed' in addition to being a contribution to the field of literary studies."--Carolien Van Nerom, coeditor of Music and Its Narrative Potential "Ella Mingazova's study on slowness in narrative is timely and groundbreaking. Unpacking a rarely studied aspect of the shift to reading in postclassical narratology and not shying away from complex issues such as boredom, Narrative Slowness as Effect sheds new light on the mechanisms of speed and rhythm in texts and their subtle yet highly varying reception by readers, as well as their almost invisible but vitally important moods. One strength of the book is its close readings, which offer fascinating new perspectives on our interactions with old and new classics such as books by Teju Cole, Don DeLillo, and Marcel Proust."--Jan Baetens, author of Novelization: From Film to Novel