Tone: Writing and the Sound of Feeling

By Judith Roof

Book Overview

Tone is often decisive in whether we love or dislike a story, novel, or even critical essay. Yet literary critics rarely treat tone as a necessary or important element of literary style or critique. There are surprisingly few analyses of what tone is, how texts produce tone, or the ways tone--as an essential element of narration--contributes to character, story, mood, and voice.

Tone's 24 micro-chapters offer a playful, eclectic, and fast-paced guide into the creation of tone in a variety of modern and contemporary works of literature by such varied writers as Hemingway, Woolf, and Sedaris, as well as in criticism, advertising, and machine-authored texts. Judith Roof shows how tone is a crucial element in all writing, as it produces the illusion of a telling voice; creates a sense of character, personality, and attitude; inflects events recounted; anticipates certain directions and possibilities; and creates an ambiance that simultaneously produces, enables, and shapes narratives and characters. Tone gives us a lively and original way to rethink the practice of literary criticism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1501362577
• ISBN13: 9781501362576
• Release Date: October 2020
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"