assonance

assonance [ass‐ŏn‐ăns], the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables (and sometimes in the following unstressed syllables) of neighbouring words; it is distinct from rhyme in that the consonants differ although the vowels or diphthongs match: sweet dreams, hit or miss. As a substitute for rhyme at the ends of verse lines, assonance (sometimes called vowel rhyme or vocalic rhyme) had a significant function in early Celtic, Spanish, and French versification (notably in the chansons de geste), but in English it has been an optional poetic device used within and between lines of verse for emphasis or musical effect, as in these lines from Tennyson's ‘The Lotos‐Eaters’:

And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild‐eyed melancholy Lotos‐eaters came.

Adjective: assonantal.

assonance, the noticeable recurrence of a sound in successive words; compare ALLITERATION.

1. Greek. The Greeks occasionally employed assonance for the sake of its aesthetic effect but took no pains to avoid it when no effect was intended, even when the repetition of sound seems to us displeasing. To judge from a comic fragment, fault was found with Euripides for excessive use of the letter sigma, but his extant plays are not noticeably more sigmatic than the rest of Greek literature. Punning assonance sometimes occurs, but not always for humorous effect; many Greek thinkers believed that there was a significant connection between similar-sounding words. Hence phrases like pathei mathos (‘through suffering comes knowledge’) and soma sema (‘the body is a tomb’) acquired deeper meaning. There is little evidence for deliberate rhyming in epic or drama, though it seems occasionally to happen in the final lines of a scene, or in a proverbial phrase. Prose writers avoided rhyme, except for conscious and mannered stylists like Isocrates.

2. Latin. The kind of assonance known as alliteration, often obtrusively and artlessly employed, is a common feature of early Latin poetry. By the time of Virgil, however, it had come to be employed with great subtlety and with emotional effect. A similar development is seen in prose, Cicero using the device with more point and less obtrusiveness than his predecessors. Tacitus uses alliterative pairs of words with great effect. The Roman ear seems to have enjoyed the judicious repetition of similar terminations in the more impassioned parts of oratory, an aspect of assonance employed more subtly by the poets. This usage easily turns into a species of rhyme found occasionally in poetry of all periods, but used deliberately in the accentual hymns from the fifth century AD onwards and with great beauty in the secular medieval lyrics.