Listening to Jane : A Comparison of the Original Novel Jane Eyre and Three Abridged Audio Book Versions    from the Point of View of Genre.

Abstract:

While some people enjoy reading full-length novels, most people have a difficult time concentrating on reading or even finding the time to do it. Audio books, especially abridged ones, may be a way for people to enjoy fiction without having to read the whole novel and they can listen to the text at the same time as they do other things. The purpose of this essay is to study whether the abridged audio books can be a valid replacement for the full novel in terms of genre. The essay compares Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë in its full length with three abridged audio books of the same novel. In these three audio versions the original text has been abridged in varying degrees so that the shortest version runs to fifty minutes, the second shortest to three hours and the longest to six hours. The three genres I focus on are the Romance, the Gothic novel and the female Bildungsroman. I present genre-specific features and then analyze how these characteristics are affected in the abridged versions of Jane Eyre.