Alliteration vs. Assonance

Main Difference

The main difference between Alliteration and Assonance is that the Alliteration is a a stylistic literary device identified by the repeated sound of the first letter in a series of multiple words, or the repetition of the same letter sounds in stressed syllables of a phrase and Assonance is a repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences; one of the building blocks of verse.

• Alliteration

  In literature, alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of identical initial consonant sounds in successive or closely associated syllables within a group of words, even those spelled differently. As a method of linking words for effect, alliteration is also called head rhyme or initial rhyme. For example, “humble house,” or “potential power play.” A familiar example is “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”. “Alliteration” is from the Latin word littera, meaning “letter of the alphabet”; it was first coined in a Latin dialogue by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano in the 15th century.Some literary experts accept as alliteration the repetition of vowel sounds, or repetition at the end of words. Alliteration narrowly refers to the repetition of a letter in any syllables that, according to the poem’s meter, are stressed, as in James Thomson’s verse “Come…dragging the lazy languid line along”.Consonance is a broader literary device identified by the repetition of consonant sounds at any point in a word (for example, coming home, hot foot). Alliteration is a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound is in the stressed syllable. Alliteration may also refer to the use of different but similar consonants, such as alliterating z with s, as does the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or as Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poets would alliterate hard/fricative g with soft g (the latter exemplified in some courses as the letter yogh – ȝ – pronounced like the y in yarrow or the j in Jotunheim).There is one specialised form of alliteration called Symmetrical Alliteration. That is, alliteration containing parallelism, or chiasmus. In this case, the phrase must have a pair of outside end words both starting with the same sound, and pairs of outside words also starting with matching sounds as one moves progressively closer to the centre. For example, “rust brown blazers rule” or “fluoro colour co-ordination forever”. Symmetrical alliteration is similar to palindromes in its use of symmetry.

• Assonance

  Assonance is a resemblance in the sounds of words/syllables either between their vowels (e.g., meat, bean) or between their consonants (e.g., keep, cape). However, assonance between consonants is generally called consonance in American usage. The two types are often combined, as between the words six and switch, in which the vowels are identical, and the consonants are similar but not completely identical. 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.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 dog or history and mystery. Vocalic assonance is an important element in verse. Assonance occurs more often in verse than in prose; it is used in English-language poetry and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish, and the Celtic languages.