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Alliteration, Euphony, Cacophony, and Onomatopoeia

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81 views11 pages

Alliteration, Euphony, Cacophony, and Onomatopoeia

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zh bhr
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Alliteration,

Euphony,
Cacophony, and
Onomatopoeia
Musical devices Free verse does not use consistent
meter patterns, rhyme, or any
musical pattern. It thus tends to
follow the rhythm of natural speech.

alliteration
Repetition
Musical
rhyme
devices
accents
alliteration:

Repetition of
sounds: assonance
Alliteration

consonance
Function of Alliteration

Reinforce
meaning

Provide tone
To link related color:
words, symmetry Soft,
cacophonous
Alliteration
 The repetition of a speech sound(not letters) in nearby words.
 Usually when the recurring sound begins the word or a stressed syllable (compare with
rhyme)
 Examples:
 Pop culture: Coca Cola, Peter Parker, Mickey Mouse, Shaun the Sheep
 "The Soul selects her own Society-
Then - shuts the Door -“
 Dragging the lazy languid line along
 The fair breeze blow, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free
 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
 Siren Song
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible
 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
 He clasps the crag with crooked hands
 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste:
Assonance
 The repetition of identical or similar vowels

 Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,


Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time
 Tyger, Tyger burning bright in the forest of the night
 A host of golden daffodils
 No motion has she now, no force
Consonance

 The repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words


whose vowel sounds are different (e.g. coming home, hotfoot). The
term is especially used for a special case of such repetition in which
the words are identical except for the vowel sound:
 group/grope, middle /muddle, wonder/wander
 Live/love, lean/alone, pitter/patter

"Out of this house" ‚ said rider to reader,


"Yours never will" ‚ said farer to fearer,
"They're looking for you" ‚ said hearer to horror,
Alliterative verse
 A form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate metrical
structure as opposed to rhyme.
 Other important figures: Litotes, irony, and kenning.
 Practiced in Germanic languages and old English verse
 The verse is unrhymed , each verse line divided into two parts separated by a
caesura.
 Caesura: a pause
 At least one and usually two stressed syllables in the first half line alliterate with the first
(and sometimes the second) stressed syllable of the second half line.
 In this kind of verse any vowel was assumed to alliterate with any other vowel.
 Alliterative revival: This tradition was revived in the poetry of the 14th century. They
practiced alliterative meter similar to that of Old English verse but less regular. E.g.
Brut, Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers Plowman.
 In alliterative revival, sometimes alliteration was used in combination with rhyme, e.g.
Pearl.
 In a sommer season, when soft was the sun
A fair field full of folk, Found I there between
Of all manner of men, the mean and the rich
Working and wandering, as the world asketh
 See Tolkien revival The Tales of Beleriand
Related Terms

• Smooth, pleasant, and musical


• e.g. To Autumn or sonnet 30
Euphony

• dissonance
• Rough, harsh, and not musical
Cacophony • e.g. The Eagle, Tennyson
• Twas brilling, and the slithy toves
• Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
Related terms: Onomatopoeia

 Or echoism
 Narrow, and most common use: a word, or a
combination of words, whose sounds seem to resemble
the sound it denotes: hiss, buzz, rattle, bang.
 The moan of the doves in immemorial elms (Tennyson, “The
Princess”)
 As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand. (Browning,
“Meeting at Night”)

Broad use: when a word corresponds what they denote


not just in sound but in any way: size, movement, tactile
 Leaf e.e. commings

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