ASSONANCE, CONSONANCE AND DISSONANCE

English 11 AP – Literary Terms – K. Curran

Definitions:

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. For example, "She sells seashells by the seashore" contains the repetition of short E and long E sounds - - that's assonance. So is the old slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners: "It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.” There is no actual rhyme there, in the English sense, but there is the repetition of vowel sounds.

Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the end of stressed syllables, without the correspondence of vowels, as you would have in rhyme. An example would be the repetition of consonants or of a consonant pattern, especially at the ends of words, as in blank and think or strong and string.

Assonance Consonance

More examples of assonance:

"Strips of tinfoil winking like people”

(Sylvia Plath, "The Bee Meeting")

"Those images that yetFresh images beget,That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea."(W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium“)

"I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless."(Thin Lizzy, "With Love")

More examples of consonance:

Note the S sounds throughout… and the Ws.

In some languages, rhyme is defined by internal vowel and/or consonant sounds, instead of final rhymes, as it is in English.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningbyRobert Frost (1874-1963)

“Whose woods these are I think I

know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

As a literary term, dissonance means a harsh or inharmonious sound. It is similar to the term “cacophony.” Generally speaking, writers employ dissonance on purpose to suggest anger or discord, or for deliberate dramatic effect. Dissonance employs language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce, such as this line from John Updike’s Player Piano: "never my numb plunker fumbles."

Dissonance

Dissonance

There are many great examples of dissonance in literature, but perhaps the best way to understand the concept is to think like…

…A Klingon!

Klingons

In the original Star Trek series in the 1960s, the Klingons were bad guys. They were unceasingly violent, and had few, if any redeeming qualities. (They were developed as characters and became less cartoonishly evil in later versions of the series.)

Die-hard Star Trek fans developed a complete Klingon language and lexicon.

This language reflects the Klingon’s natural state of anger.

Klingon to English – Harsh, Baby

Ha-qua ma pay qua mack!

DaHjajaj QaQ Daghajjaj!

Ja cho mack raj pen gah tack!

Hab Sachi Quatch!

Toe Dwa Maj Gositequak

The bile of the vanquished flows over my hands!

Have a nice day! Mate until your blood

screams! Your mother has a

smooth forehead! Merry Christmas

I have used phonetics, of course… The original Klingon would look

something like:

which would be pronounced “Tak marhuk ped toe murhark”, and translates into “Ooooh, that flower arrangement is soooo fabulous!” Dissonant, eh?

Websites gratefully cited include: http://www.kli.org/ (The Klingon Language

Institute) http://www.online-literature.com/frost/ http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/updike.htm http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/ http://www.hotink.com/warriorgallery/

01.html http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl187/

docs/plathpoem.html