Sound Devices

Alliteration, Consonance, and Assonance

Alliteration

• Alliteration: the repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of words

• Example: from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”“While I nodded, nearly

napping, suddenly therecame a tapping…”

Your Turn!

• Identify the alliteration in the following poem (“A word is dead,” by Emily Dickenson):

A word is deadWhen it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

Check Yourself (before you wreck yourself?)

• Identify the alliteration in the following poem (“A word is dead,” by Emily Dickenson):

A word is deadWhen it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

Assonance

• Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds in words

• Example from Walt Whitman’s, “Song of Myself:

I loaf and invite my soulI lean and loaf at my ease…

Your Turn!

• Find the assonance in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Then look for alliteration!

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,Have left me to that solitude, which suitsAbstruser musings: save that at my sideMy cradled infant slumbers peacefully

Check Yourself!

• Find the assonance in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Then look for alliteration!

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,Have left me to that solitude, which suitsAbstruser musings: save that at my sideMy cradled infant slumbers peacefully

Consonance

• Consonance: the repetition of a consonant sound NOT at the beginning of words

• Example: from “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins“World’s strand, sway of the sea;Lord of living and dead;Thou hast bound bones and veins in

me…”

Your Turn!• Identify the consonance in Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold

can Stay.” Then find examples of alliteration and assonance!

Nature's first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Check Yourself!• Identify the consonance in Robert Frost’s “Nothing

Gold can Stay.” Then find examples of alliteration and assonance!

Nature's first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

The “Test”• Identify examples of alliteration, assonance, and

consonance in Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

The Answers• Identify examples of alliteration, assonance, and

consonance in Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

“The Bells” (Edgar Allan Poe)Hear the tolling of the bells -

Iron bells!What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!In the silence of the night,How we shiver with affrightAt the melancholy menace of their tone!For every sound that floatsFrom the rust within their throatsIs a groan.

And the people -ah, the people - They that dwell up in the steeple,All alone,And who tolling, tolling, tolling,In that muffled monotone,Feel a glory in so rollingOn the human heart a stone - They are neither man nor woman - They are neither brute nor human - They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;And he rolls, rolls, rolls,RollsA paean from the bells!And his merry bosom swellsWith the paean of the bells!And he dances, and he yells;Keeping time, time, time,In a sort of Runic rhyme,To the paean of the bells,Of the bells -

Keeping time, time, time,In a sort of Runic rhyme,To the throbbing of the bells,Of the bells, bells, bells - To the sobbing of the bells;Keeping time, time, time,As he knells, knells, knells,In a happy Runic rhyme,To the rolling of the bells,Of the bells, bells, bells - To the tolling of the bells,Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,Bells, bells, bells - To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.