The Aural Narrative and Decay of Story-Telling: The Impacts of Reproducibility in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of English, Faculty of Language and Literature, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran

2 Department of English and Linguistics, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.

10.22034/lda.2026.145767.1134

Abstract

The present paper seeks to investigate Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003) under the light of Walter Benjamin’s concepts of aura, storytelling, and reproducibility. In his seminal article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), Benjamin heavily criticized the deplorable influence of the modern discourse and the new technology on the lives of the masses. Benjamin maintained that the emergence of new technology not only had drastically changed the function of works of art to the contemporary audience but also had inevitably led to a sharp decline of the aural aspect of those artworks. According to Benjamin, the concept of storytelling was diminished by both the act of dissemination of the novels and the information. By focusing on the central character Erick Packer, DeLillo’s Cosmopolis vividly depicts the decay of aura due to the replication of works of art; it also demonstrates the significance of storytelling by providing a rather detailed analysis of one of the significant characters, Benno Levin. The novel also illustrates the concept of reproducibility mainly through the reproduction of Erick Packer’s favorite songs, which led to the devaluation of those artworks.

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