Speed in the short dramas by Philippe Minyana

Speed is an aspect of literary time rarely addressed by literary theories. This article deals with the speed of brevity in Philippe Minyana's short dramas. Philippe Minyana wrote Drames brefs (1) in 1995, and Drames brefs (2) in 1997. In rhetorical tradition conciseness is associated with speed. However, this series of short dramas gives rise to an impression of complex speed. At the same time that there is a prevailing impression of speed, desired by their author, there is also a sense of slowness. The analysis of these plays shows that rapid speed is mainly due to the brevity of the sentences, the abundance of breaks and the absence of links between the sentences, which correspond to the temporality of the text. Instead, the speed of the environments, the situations, the themes and the actions shown, which are an aspect of temporality within the text, evoke a repetitive world, and an impression of slowness.