Vocal Woolf : The audiobook as a technology of health

• This article explores the therapeutic potential of the performing audiobook voice. It takes its point of departure in the view that the audiobook negotiates the semantics of a text and its vocal manifestation. A key idea is that the performing voice is an affordance for creating a salutogenic sense of coherence in the listener. The argument is theoretically situated within the context of the psychology and sociology of music with affect regulation and ‘health-musicking’ as significant elements. The British actress Juliet Stevenson’s reading of Virginia Woolf’s second novel Night and Day (1919) will be approached as a case of ‘health-musicking’ and an event-based appreciation of sonic culture. This discussion will focus on the listeners’ appropriation of the sound object for their own empowering purposes.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musikvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Musicology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

audiobook

fiction

health technology

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)