Alliteration

Assonance and
Onomatopoeia
 Phonostylistic Devices

Alliteration Assonance Onomatopoeia

Repetition of the same initial Repetition of vowels in two or Imitation of sounds produced
letter sounds in a line of words. more words. by people or in nature.

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Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height
be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Alliteration – using exact same words, sounds
L, A, R -> bring more emphasis
Assonance – sound A in all three words
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 Seven Ages Of Man
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women
merely players;
They have their exits and their
entrances,
And one man in his time plays
many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At
first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the
nurse’s arms;
And then the whining
schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face,
creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And
then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a
woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’
eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and
bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and
quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s
mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good
capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of
formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern
instances;
And so he plays his part...
Alliteration – sound E -> to
create musical effect
Assonance – sounds P, Q -> in
“quick” and “quarrel” to create
a semantic unity
Onomatopoeia – “mewling”
and “puking” -> to express
sounds and give dual purpose
 Sonnet 12
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves
forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make
defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee
hence.
Alliteration – sounds C, T, B -> helps evoke
the repeating, regular ticks of a clock; evoking
the steady thump of a funeral march
Assonance – sounds A, EE -> to create a
semantic and logical unit with words of
different meanings
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Sonnet 55
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these
contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish
time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall
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burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find
room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
Thank you for your
attention!