Assonance
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words.
Assonance tunes a line's vowel music: long vowels slow and darken a passage, short ones quicken it, all without the obviousness of full rhyme.
Assonance examples
"Hear the mellow wedding bells."
- The Bells, Edgar Allan Poe
"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."
- My Fair Lady
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary"
- The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
"Stem end and blossom end, / And every fleck of russet showing clear."
- After Apple-Picking, Robert Frost
"Beside the lake, beneath the trees, / Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
- I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth
"Soft language issued from their spitless lips as they swished in slow circles round and round the field, winding hither and thither through the weeds."
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Spot the Assonance
Score: 0/0The repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words.
"Hear the mellow wedding bells."
Which work is this from?
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Assonance: common questions
What is assonance in literature?
The repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words. Assonance tunes a line's vowel music: long vowels slow and darken a passage, short ones quicken it, all without the obviousness of full rhyme.
What is an example of assonance?
A classic example is "Hear the mellow wedding bells." (The Bells, Edgar Allan Poe).
What is the difference between assonance and consonance?
Assonance repeats vowel sounds (mellow wedding bells); consonance repeats consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words (pitter-patter). Alliteration is consonance restricted to the beginnings of words.
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