Judith Roof is the William Shakespeare Chair in English at Rice University, USA. She is the author of The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2018), What Gender Is, What Gender Does (2016), as well as five other monographs, six edited (or co-edited) books, and more than 80 essays on topics ranging from modern drama to The Big Lebowski, Ethel Merman, Posthumanism, the novels of Percival Everett, the work of Rabelais, Beckett, Pinter, Duras, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, film studies, genetics, critical legal studies, and secondary characters.

• Preface—Key ToneAcknowledgments1. Setting the Tone2. Toning Up3. Tone Jam4. Intoning5. Taking That Tone6. Two Tone7. Two Tones8. Atonement: The Sound a Tree Makes When It Falls9. Tone Down10. Touch Tone11. Tense Tone12. Tone "R" Us13. We-Tone14. The Tone “We” Tell15. Tonal Dialogics16. Inscribing Tone17. Moebius Tone18. Telling Tones19. iTone20. Toning Fork21. Dissonant Tones22. Toning Up/Toning Down23. Tone-ads24. RoboToneNotesBibliographyIndex

Through close readings of a great variety of recent literary texts approached from the innovative angle of ‘tone,’ this book sheds new light on the inseparable processes of reading and narrating. Its brilliant analyses of tone, while further exploring the interactions of rhetoric and politics, allow to thoroughly revisit literary genres and categories as well as the definitions of some of the basic terms of criticism.

Judith Roof is the William Shakespeare Chair in English at Rice University, USA. She is the author of The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2018), What Gender Is, What Gender Does (2016), as well as five other monographs, six edited (or co-edited) books, and more than 80 essays on topics ranging from modern drama to The Big Lebowski, Ethel Merman, Posthumanism, the novels of Percival Everett, the work of Rabelais, Beckett, Pinter, Duras, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, film studies, genetics, critical legal studies, and secondary characters.

• Preface—Key ToneAcknowledgments1. Setting the Tone2. Toning Up3. Tone Jam4. Intoning5. Taking That Tone6. Two Tone7. Two Tones8. Atonement: The Sound a Tree Makes When It Falls9. Tone Down10. Touch Tone11. Tense Tone12. Tone "R" Us13. We-Tone14. The Tone “We” Tell15. Tonal Dialogics16. Inscribing Tone17. Moebius Tone18. Telling Tones19. iTone20. Toning Fork21. Dissonant Tones22. Toning Up/Toning Down23. Tone-ads24. RoboToneNotesBibliographyIndex

Through close readings of a great variety of recent literary texts approached from the innovative angle of ‘tone,’ this book sheds new light on the inseparable processes of reading and narrating. Its brilliant analyses of tone, while further exploring the interactions of rhetoric and politics, allow to thoroughly revisit literary genres and categories as well as the definitions of some of the basic terms of criticism.

Judith Roof is the William Shakespeare Chair in English at Rice University, USA. She is the author of The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2018), What Gender Is, What Gender Does (2016), as well as five other monographs, six edited (or co-edited) books, and more than 80 essays on topics ranging from modern drama to The Big Lebowski, Ethel Merman, Posthumanism, the novels of Percival Everett, the work of Rabelais, Beckett, Pinter, Duras, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, film studies, genetics, critical legal studies, and secondary characters.

• Preface—Key ToneAcknowledgments1. Setting the Tone2. Toning Up3. Tone Jam4. Intoning5. Taking That Tone6. Two Tone7. Two Tones8. Atonement: The Sound a Tree Makes When It Falls9. Tone Down10. Touch Tone11. Tense Tone12. Tone "R" Us13. We-Tone14. The Tone “We” Tell15. Tonal Dialogics16. Inscribing Tone17. Moebius Tone18. Telling Tones19. iTone20. Toning Fork21. Dissonant Tones22. Toning Up/Toning Down23. Tone-ads24. RoboToneNotesBibliographyIndex

Through close readings of a great variety of recent literary texts approached from the innovative angle of ‘tone,’ this book sheds new light on the inseparable processes of reading and narrating. Its brilliant analyses of tone, while further exploring the interactions of rhetoric and politics, allow to thoroughly revisit literary genres and categories as well as the definitions of some of the basic terms of criticism.