Figures of Speech

Alliteration and Assonance

 Alliteration

► Itis a literary or rhetorical stylistic device

that consists in repeating the same
consonant sound at the beginning of several
words in close succession.
► In poetry, alliteration may also refer to repetition
of a consonant in any syllables that, according to
the poem's meter, are stressed as if they
occurred at the beginning of a word.

► Alliteration
is usually distinguished from the
mere repetition of the same sound in positions
other than the beginning of each word —
whether a consonant, as in "some mammals
are clammy" (consonance) or a vowel, as in
"yellow wedding bells" (assonance); but the
term is sometimes used in these broader senses.
 Examples of Alliteration
 Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
 A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
 If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
 Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper
picked?
► Daddy's Gone A Hunting
Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a - hunting,
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap baby bunting in.
By Mother Goose

► angling alligators ate apples and

aardvarks.
► Crisp cookies crackle crunchily.
► Poem: "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe
Example:
► Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered
weak and weary (1);
► rare and radiant maiden (11);
► And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each
purple curtain (notice the
deft use of consonance as well)(13);
► Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood
there wondering, fearing, / Doubting, dreaming
dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
(19-20).
► Dewdrops Dancing Down Daisies

By Paul Mc Cann

Don't delay dawns disarming display .

Dusk demands daylight .
Dewdrops dwell delicately
drawing dazzling delight .
Dewdrops dilute daisies domain.
Distinguished debutantes . Diamonds
defray delivered
daylights distilled daisy dance .
► Dancing Dolphins
By Paul McCann

Those tidal thoroughbreds that tango through

the turquoise tide.

Their taut tails thrashing they twist in tribute

to the titans.

They twirl through the trek

tumbling towards the tide .

Throwing themselves towards those theatrical

thespians.
Cipher Connected
► By Paul McCann

Careless cars cutting corners create

confusion .
Crossing centrelines.
Countless collisions cost coffins.
Collect conscious change.
Copy?
Continue cautiously.
Comply?
Cool .
► Wisdoms Wings
By Paul Mc Cann
Wise words wait,
while whiskey with water
will whet Wexford
whistles wonderfully .
Wisdoms weaver works
with wit ,
while writing words
with whispering winds whooshing wildly .
Whiskey without water .
Without wondering,
why where words wasted .
Within walls .
While whiskey went well without water,
While wit was wringing wet .
Writing wisdoms wings
 Assonance

► It is refrain of vowel sounds to create

internal rhyming within phrases or
sentences, and together with alliteration
and consonance serves as one of the
building blocks of verse.
► Figureof repetition in which different
words with the same or similar vowel
sounds occur successively in words with
different consonants; two or more words
with similar vowel sounds sandwiched
between different consonants.
 Examples of Assonance
► Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn
— William Wordsworth, "
The world is too much with us”

► Those images that yet

Fresh images be get,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented
sea."
► "The spider skins lie on their sides,
translucent and ragged, their legs drying
in knots.“

► Hear the mellow wedding bells

— Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells“

► That
solitude which suits abstruser
musings.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
►  Hear the lark and harken to the barking
of the dog-fox gone to ground
— Pink Floyd 
► Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did
we know that we riddled two middle men
who didn't do diddily.“
— Big Pun
►I bomb atomically—Socrates' philosophies
and hypotheses can't define how I be
droppin' these mockeries.
— Inspectah Deck, from the Wu-Tang Clan's
"Triumph."
► The crumbling thunder of seas
— Robert Louis Stevenson
► "As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with
seven wives, 
Every wife had seven sacks, every sack had
seven cats, 
Every cat had seven kittens: kittens, cats,
sacks and wives, 
How many were going to St. Ives?"
-- delivered by Jeremy Irons, from the
movie Die Hard with a Vengeance (as taken
from the riddle poem "As I was going to St.
Ives")
► "The setting sun was licking the hard
bright machine like some great invisible
beast on its knees."
(John Hawkes, Death, Sleep, and the
Traveler)

► "Imust confess that in my quest I felt

depressed and restless."
(Thin Lizzy, "With Love")
 End of the
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