What are some examples of literary tone?

Answer 1

Tone--from Many Worlds of Poetry, by Drachler and Terris

Tone ordinarily refers to all the ways in which a voice may enrich or modify the meanings of spoken words. We are all familiar with the great variety of tones possible in speech. We may be put off by a note of condescension, or whining, or aggressiveness. We can be comforted by tones that are sympathetic or soothing. We find ourselves persuaded not only by cogent reasons, but by the sounds of patient reasoning. We often sense that a person is saying something quite different from what his words convey: his words may be calm, but his voice agitated; or his words may be pleasant, while his entire manner speaks of impatience or dislike. Words of praise are easily turned into words of scorn by a touch of irony in the voice.

The voices of poetry, however, must contrive to produce in print all those effects that a speaker, face-to-face with his audience, creates by tone, gesture, and stance. TONE in poetry comprises the attitudes of the poet toward his subject and toward his audience, as they can be inferred from the poem. These attitudes need not always be separately distinguishable in a poem, but the sensitive reader is ready to respond to them as they present themselves. What clues will the reader have to these attitudes? Tone shows itself most often in diction, but also appears in images, cadences, rhythms, or any other events in the poem.

To judge fairly about tone, we must consider a poem as a whole. The effects of the parts must be understood in relation to each other. Nevertheless, individual lines may set up strong vibrations of tone. Our comments on the following brief excerpts from poems are not meant to apply to the entire poems from which they come. They are intended merely as preliminary illustrations of how tone works:

I met a traveler from an antique land. (Shelley, "Ozymandias").This line immediately generates a story-telling atmosphere, just as it is with the phrase, "Once upon a time." An audience is clearly implied.His Grace! impossible! what, dead!

Of old age, too, and in his bed! (Swift, "A Satirical Elegy")The first three exclamations in this example might be said in sympathy, too; but the next phrases signal malice and give the earlier exclamations a tone of spiteful gusto.Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. (Yeats, "The Second Coming"The tone is powerfully ominous, and the poet takes the stance of a prophet of doom.I envy the tendrils, their eyeless seeking (Roethke, "The Abyss").The tone is delicate, intimate, as a of a person telling his inmost feelings.Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. (Crane, "War Is Kind").The poet is not addressing an actual maiden. If he were, he would not use this manner of speech. He uses the form of direct address to make the line sound theatrical and underscore its heavy irony.You'll love me yet--and I can tarry. (Browning, "Pippa Passes")Direct address is convincing here in its sprightly cadence. The tone is cheerful and energetic.Quintana lay in the shallow grave of coral. The guns boomed stupidly, fifty yards away. (Shapiro, "The Bourgeois Poet")In the first sentence the poet is absent. We think only of the scene. In the second, the word "stupidly" makes us aware of the voice of the author and implies the attitude of anger at the situation. But the anger sounds genuine, not theatrical or forced.

Answer 2

dont give