======================================================================= DIRECTIONS: DOUBLE CLICK ON THE "More Files" OPTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PG CATALOG PAGE LISTING TO FIND THE "Files" DIRECTORY. DOUBLE CLICK ON THIS TO OPEN THE DIRECTORY OF THE AUDIO FILES. ======================================================================== Preface To The Initial Project Gutenberg Edition Of The Audio Reading Of Edward Gibbon's Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. Or A First Venue of Excuses, Denials, and Disclaimers. Let me say at the outset that those who expect this complete audio rendering of Gibbon's historical and literary masterpiece to be an epitome of perfect, pear-shaped, dropped -"r" Oxbridge English may be disappointed. I believe there is such an "audiobook" edition available commercially, but it isn't free. Experimenting some years ago with the text-to-speech software then available, I thought it would be very funny, the private joke of a modern American barbarian, to have the "little stuffed voices" rendering, in their innocent and patient way, the imposing yet effervescent bulk of Gibbon's magnificent and immortal marble-pillared prose. To my amazement, if not to the credit of my taste, I've found this shotgun wedding of sound and sense quite harmonious, vital, and durable through many years of repeated listening. I find that the voices, unembodied and wooden at first audit, but softer, incarnate, personalized by acclimatization, pack more expression and clarity of diction into a few megabytes of software than is exhibited by most humans I hear these days, except for trained entertainment professionals and seasoned barroom raconteurs. I propose that the relentless yet measured deadpan delivery, the ironic contrast of unwitting voice and worldly wise content, is a plausible fit to the objective, slightly distant facade of Gibbon's dense and rational, waste-no-word, 18th century style; a foil to his balanced tone, restrained despite dudgeon, covering a tale that is, face it, in its majority, a mordant chronicle, incarnadined--my favorite period bon mot--by battle, gore, and treachery. Of itself Gibbon's voluminous tragedy--the framework imposed by historians of his time--allows us only the occasional adrenal or comic relief by means of an essay on the basics of Roman jurisprudence, the topography of Arabia, or the absurdities and impossibilities of early Christian theology, not to mention the priceless vituperation against the "Greeks" at the end of Chapter 53.