Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance[1] serves as one of the building blocks of verse. Assonance is a rhyme, the identity of which depends merely on the vowel sounds. Thus, an assonance is merely a syllabic resemblance.
Assonance occurs more often in verse than in prose. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language poetry, and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish and the Celtic languages.
Examples[edit]
English poetry is rich with examples of assonance:
That solitude which suits abstruser musings
on a proud round cloud in white high night
— E. E. Cummings, if a cheerfulest Elephantangelchild should sit
It also occurs in prose:
Soft language issued from their spitless lips as they swished in low circles round and round the field, winding hither and thither through the weeds.
— James Joyce, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
English-language hip hop relies on assonance, which is sometimes hard to distinguish from slant rhyme:
Fire at the private eye hired to pry in my business.
— Eminem, 'Criminal'
Dead in the middle of little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn't do diddly.
— Big Pun, 'Twinz'
It is not unheard of in other forms of popular music, either:
I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless
— Thin Lizzy, "With Love"
Assonance is common in proverbs, such as:
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
The early bird catches the worm.
These proverbs can be a form of short poetry, as in the following Oromo proverb, which describes someone with a big reputation among those who do not know them well:
kan mana baala, aʔlaa gaala (A leaf at home, but a camel elsewhere)
Note the complete assonance in this Amharic proverb:
yälämmänä mänämmänä (The one who begs fades away)
See also[edit]
Sources[edit]
- Assonance, American Rhetoric: Rhetorical Figures in Sound
- Assonance, Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, University of Pennsylvania
- Definition of Assonance, Elements of Poetry, VirtuaLit
