Long before the invention of the phonograph, the written word was
unrivaled as a medium of the human voice. In The Ancient Phonograph,
Shane Butler takes us back to an age, long before Edison, when writing
itself was still relatively new. He meticulously reconstructs a series
of Greek and Roman soundscapes ranging from Aristotle to Augustine.
Here the real voices of tragic actors, ambitious orators, and singing
emperors blend with the imagined voices of lovesick nymphs, tormented
heroes, and angry gods. The resonant world we encounter in ancient
sources is at first unfamiliar, populated by texts that speak and sing,
often with no clear difference between the two. But Butler discovers a
commonality that invites a deeper understanding of why voices mattered
then, and why they have mattered since.
With later examples that range from Petrarch to Puccini, Mozart to Jimi
Hendrix, Butler offers an ambitious attempt to rethink the voice -- as
an anatomical presence, a conceptual category, and a source of pleasure
and wonder. He carefully and critically assesses the strengths and
limits of recent theoretical approaches to the voice by Adriana Cavarero
and Mladen Dolar and makes a rich and provocative range of ancient
material available for the first time to students and scholars in voice
studies, sound studies, and media theory. The Ancient Phonograph will
appeal not only to classicists but to anyone interested in the verbal
arts -- literature, oratory, song -- and the nature of aesthetic
experience.
