Assonance

Assonance is a stylistic device of sound-writing consisting in the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in adjacent words or lines to create a special musicality and emotional colouring of speech. The repetition of vowels forms a melodious sound background capable of conveying mood, reinforcing lyrical intonation, uniting words with additional phonetic links. In versification assonance also denotes a slant rhyme built only on the coincidence of stressed vowels with a divergence of consonants — such a type of rhyming is widely used in modern poetry. Assonance interacts closely with alliteration, together forming the sound-writing of verse. The skilful combination of vowel and consonant repetitions makes poetic speech especially euphonious and is a mark of the high phonetic culture of a literary text.