Audiobooks As Artefacts : Listening for Classification and Appreciation

Their ever-evolving popularity notwithstanding, audiobooks remain a rather undertheorized phenomenon. The handful of existing studies have adopted an inherently historicist approach, failing to identify or scrutinize their aesthetic importance. Thus, rather than regarding them as mere recorded 'versions' of existing literary works, this book explores them as the unique products of a hitherto undefined genre, namely, performance-based aural artefacts. Appropriately, the very act of listening to them is rendered a distinct aesthetic experience in its own right. If the proof of the proverbial pudding is purportedly in the eating, then by surveying a series of case studies, this book aims to provide one with comparative close listenings-appropriately analyzing and debating their aesthetic properties and merit. Finally, in exploring what is identified herein as one's 'informed intuition' and its role in the craft of casting audiobooks, this study also proposes a new understating of how aesthetic appreciation works in action--

• | Author: David Sheinberg
• | Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
• | Publication Date: Jun 18, 2024
• | Number of Pages: NA pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 1963049357
• | ISBN-13: 9781963049350