The following reflections on" narrative speed" are an attempt to remediate the traditional'reply'to a scholarly article, followed by a'reply to the reply'by the first author. Instead, the two authors of this jointly written response to the arti cle published by Kathryn Hume in 2005 have decided from the very beginning to merge their ideas and remarks on the subject. They have tried from the very beginning to conceive their exchange as an integrated dialogue, the results of which they hope to be useful for the whole narrative/Narrative community. Our thanks go also to the participants of the session on" Contemporary Narratol ogy" held during the last International Conference of Narrative (Ottawa, 2006), whose remarks on a draft version of this text have been extremely useful.

Despite the literature gathered by Kathryn Hume in her article on the subject, speed has been one of the most undertheorized issues of narrative theory. Certainly recent theorists have neglected the topic, although many readers consider it one of the decisive parameters of any text and important to the appreciation afforded by the