What are alliteration and assonance? – Same or similar single sounds?
Alliteration is usually described as the repetition of the same consonants, and assonance as the repetition of the same vowels. But we will argue below (i) that some identical sound repetitions do not count as alliteration or assonance and (ii) that sometimes ‘repetitions’ which are similar but not identical do count sometimes. Interestingly, students of poetry don’t have much trouble in accepting that rhymes do not always have to be exact (cf. terms like ‘half-rhyme’, ‘partial-rhyme’, ‘semi-rhyme’ and ‘para-rhyme’), and this should prepare us for the idea that alliteration and assonance do not always have to be exact either.
