Tone and the essay

Abstract

Around the theme of tone and the essay, what is an essay to do for tone? A deliberated tone is a strained one. Effortless poise is what the essay, or at least a certain tradition of it, is aft er. To think of performing tone would be to have it contrived. Squarer and safer, then, to look at what literary criticism – and studies on the essay specifically – might have had to say about tone. ‘Not very much’, it turns out, might be the answer. Th is is perplexing. On and off the page the wrong tone can really rile, so schooling in how to know or strike a better one would be a fine thing. Tone, however, is writing’s most untutored attribute. If criticism has ample studies on style, but, curiously, far fewer on tone, it might be because there is something to tone that eludes, disarms or even undoes analysis. Ask to be directed to a standard study on tone and even those people trusted to be expansive will hesitate. Tone, so present in what we read as we are reading it, is what it is hard to seize and settle upon. It is what criticism underreads. To overstate the case, tone mutes criticism. In view of what tone is about this is rather odd and not a little ironic.