Empathetic Ears : The audiobook, aesthetics and affect

• Judging from sales figures, the popularity of the audiobook is more than a passing trend. While everyone seems to have an opinion on the topic, either one listens avidly or one refuses to abandon the ingrained habit of print, the aesthetic dimension of the listening experience has long been underexplored. Recently, however, producers and researchers have started to show a growing interest in the actual voicing of a text and its aesthetic effect and, consequently, readers are becoming less categorical. Reading with one’s ears is neither inferior nor superior to reading with one’s eyes; it is quite simply a different experience.My talk is founded on the assumption that this difference is related to double voicing which can be studied through the theoretical lens of audionarratology. What happens when the metaphorical voice goes physical in the performing act of narration? My focus is on the materiality of voice, what Roland Barthes famously termed its “grain.” A key argument is the recorded voice as a facilitator for an empathetic stance. In my study of the shift to the listening mode with its affective potential, previous research findings on readers’ emotional responses to print texts based on such parameters as story type (descriptive, emotional) and set (sympathetic spectator, identification) will be used as a reference point.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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