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Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar in words or syllables that occur close together, either in terms of their vowel phonemes (e.g., lean green meat) or their consonant phonemes (e.g., Kip keeps capes ). Chambers 21st Century Dictionary (1996). However, in American usage, assonance exclusively refers to this phenomenon when affecting vowels, whereas, when affecting consonants, it is generally called consonance.Merriam-Webster consonance. The two types are often combined, as between the words six and switch, which contain the same vowel and similar consonants. If there is repetition of the same vowel or some similar vowels in literary work, especially in stressed syllables, this may be termed "vowel harmony" in poetry Assonance at Enciclopaedia Britannica (though linguists have a different definition of "vowel harmony").
A special case of assonance is rhyme, in which the endings of words (generally beginning with the vowel sound of the last stressed syllable) are identical—as in fog and log or history and mystery. Vocalic assonance is an important element in Poetry. Assonance occurs more often in verse than in prose; it is used in English-language poetry and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish language, and the Celtic languages.
Put another way, assonance is a rhyme, the identity of which depends merely on the vowel sounds. Thus, an assonance is merely a Syllabic verse resemblance. For example, in W. B. Yeats poem, The Wild Swans at Coole (poem), Yeats rhymes the word swan with the word stone, thus assonance.
It also occurs in prose:
Hip hop relies on assonance:
It is also heard in other forms of popular music:
Total assonance is found in a number of Pashto proverbs from Afghan proverbs:
This poetic device can be found in the first line of Homer's Iliad: (Μ ῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Π ηλ ηϊάδεω Ἀχιλ ῆος). Another example is Dies irae (probably by Thomas of Celano):
In Dante's Divine Comedy there are some stanzas with such repetition.
In the following strophe from Hart Crane's "To Brooklyn Bridge" there is the vowel i in many stressed syllables.
All in a strophe can be linked by vowel harmony into one assonance. Such stanzas can be found in Italian or Portuguese poetry, in works by Giambattista Marino and Luís Vaz de Camões:
This is ottava rima Ottava rima at Encyclopædia Britannica. (abababcc), Ottava rima at Poetry Foundation. a very popular form in the Renaissance that was first used in epic poems.
There are many examples of vowel harmony in French,Roy Lewis, On Reading French Verse. A Study of Poetic Form, Oxford 1982, pp. 70–99, 149–190. Czech,Wiktor J. Darasz, Harmonia wokaliczna w poezji Vladimíra Holana, Almanach Czeski, 2006 (in Polish). and PolishWiktor Jarosław Darasz, Mały przewodnik po wierszu polskim, Kraków 2003, pp. 179–185 (in Polish). poetry.
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