The repetition of the same vowel sound, usually after different consonants. Here is an example from ‘Kubla Khan‘ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

‘So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;’

The origin of these two lines are to be found in a piece of travel writing by Samuel Purchas:

“Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.”

Notice how Coleridge has changed the source material.  He has used the elegance of poetic diction not simply to develop the assonance but to give a sense of dramatic grandeur.

See other literary terms

 

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