In a new review in Classical Philology Malcolm Schofield discusses Shane Butler’s The Ancient Phonograph. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full article. An excerpt appears below.

“Literature as literal phono-graph (a writing of the voice) is the theme of the book’s five chapters. This might sound like a familiar subject, treated by generations of critics thinking about orality and literacy, or literature and music. But it is not. What [Butler] describes are subtle and unexplored relationships between the linguistic and what he calls the extralinguistic real in the experience of the voice, between orality and “vocality” (a term coined by medievalist Paul Zumthor to designate “the corporeal aspect of texts,”) between speech, style, and sound effects. ”