Hearing, seeing, experiencing: Perspective taking and emotional engagement through the vocalisation of Jane Eyre, Heart of darkness and Things fall apart

Readers’ emotional engagement with fiction is a busy research area situated at the intersection between cognitive, affective and narrative theory. Perspective taking is a feature that cuts across these disciplines since the narrative situation is crucial for communicating the experiences of narrators and characters in literary texts. However, what has been explored in less detail is how the vocalisation of printed text facilitates an empathetic response due to the expressive impact of the human voice so that narratives may be visualised and experienced in a variety of ways. Within audionarratology, the concept of voice is undergoing a redefinition since it has ceased to be textually mediated and can be experienced directly. Audiobook narration is a case in point. In the present study, it is argued that empathy is a mediating agent that resides in the vocalisation of text rather than in the text itself. For the purpose of exploring this phenomenon, a pilot study was carried out. Three canonical English texts that had previously been studied in their entirety in print by a group of students were accessed in part in a remediated audio format. The listening experiment showed that the individual voice profile of each of the narrating actors had a significant impact on perspective taking and emotional engagement.