Sound Devices

1
Sound Devices

• Alliteration, Consonance, and Assonance

2
Alliteration

• Alliteration the repetition of a consonant sound
  at the beginning of words
• Example from Edgar Allan Poes The Raven
• While I nodded, nearly
• napping, suddenly there
• came a tapping

3
Your Turn!

• Identify the alliteration in the following poem
  (A word is dead, by Emily Dickenson)
• A word is dead
• When it is said,
• Some say.
• I say it just
• Begins to live
• That day.

4
Check Yourself (before you wreck yourself?)

• Identify the alliteration in the following poem
  (A word is dead, by Emily Dickenson)
• A word is dead
• When it is said,
• Some say.
• I say it just
• Begins to live
• That day.

5
Assonance

• Assonance the repetition of vowel sounds in
  words
• Example from Walt Whitmans, Song of Myself
• I loaf and invite my soul
• I lean and loaf at my ease

6
Your Turn!

• Find the assonance in Samuel Taylor Coleridges
  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

7
Check Yourself!

• Find the assonance in Samuel Taylor Coleridges
  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

8
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
• Worlds strand, sway of the sea
• Lord of living and dead
• Thou hast bound bones and veins in me

9
Your Turn!

• Identify the consonance in Robert Frosts
  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.

10
Check Yourself!

• Identify the consonance in Robert Frosts
  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.

11
The Test

• Identify examples of alliteration, assonance, and
  consonance in Robert Frosts Fire and Ice
• Some say the world will end in fire,
• Some say in ice.
• From what Ive tasted of desire
• I hold with those who favor fire.
• But if it had to perish twice,
• I think I know enough of hate
• To say that for destruction ice
• Is also great
• And would suffice.

12
The Answers

• Identify examples of alliteration, assonance, and
  consonance in Robert Frosts Fire and Ice
• Some say the world will end in fire,
• Some say in ice.
• From what Ive tasted of desire
• I hold with those who favor fire.
• But if it had to perish twice,
• I think I know enough of hate
• To say that for destruction ice
• Is also great
• And would suffice.

13
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.

14

• 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

15

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

16

• 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
  bellsKeeping 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.