Journal of Turkish Language and Literature

Abstract

Narrative pace is the fundamental determiner of temporal transitions in a literary text; it governs the continuity and rhythm of certain facts or events illustrated in the text. A literary text acquires its fictional integrity and compositional patterns through myriad flows and accelerations that accompany the narrative pace, thereby revealing intellectual and ideological representations through compositional maneuvers. Thus, the narrative pace is a fictional tool that mediates between narrative aesthetics and ideology. The narrative pace offers a domain extension and transitional space to the literary text through ideology-laden syntactic repetitions and textual momentum. The narrative pace can further be articulated through leitmotifs, which becomes a descriptive strategy that signifies the fictional velocity and acceleration of a literary text. Adalet Ağaoğlu was an important literary personality in Turkish literature. She established a fictional connection between the literary and aesthetic realities of the narrative and its ideological ground. In her stories, the narrative pace manifests this link and reveals the associations between narrative aesthetics and ideology. This study examines Adalet Ağaoğlu’s fiction from the perspective of narrative pace, attending specifically to the relationships between aesthetics and ideology.