Poetry

===Rhyme, alliteration, assonance===
{{Main|Rhyme|Alliterative verse|Assonance}}
[[File:Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV f. 132r.jpg|thumb|upright|The [[Old English]] [[epic poem]] ''[[Beowulf]]'' is in [[alliterative]] [[Verse (poetry)|verse]].]]
Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and [[Literary consonance|consonance]] are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element.<ref>{{Harvnb|Corn|1997|p=65}}</ref> They can also carry a meaning separate from the repetitive sound patterns created. For example, [[Chaucer]] used heavy alliteration to mock Old English verse and to paint a character as archaic.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Osberg |first=Richard H. |title=Essays on the art of Chaucer's Verse |publisher=Routledge |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-8153-2951-0 |editor-last=Gaylord |editor-first=Alan T. |pages=195–228 |chapter='I kan nat geeste': Chaucer's Artful Alliteration}}</ref>

Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at locations within lines ("[[internal rhyme]]"). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures; Italian, for example, has a rich rhyming structure permitting maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in rhyme.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Alighieri |first=Dante |translator-last=Pinsky |translator-first=Robert |url=https://archive.org/details/infernoofdante00dant |title=The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |year=1994 |isbn=978-0-374-17674-7 |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that language.<ref name="kiparsky">{{Cite journal |last=Kiparsky |first=Paul |date=Summer 1973 |title=The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry |journal=Daedalus |volume=102 |issue=3 |pages=231–44}}</ref>

Alliteration is the repetition of letters or letter-sounds at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in accented parts of words. Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as a key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur. This can be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried through full stanzas. Alliteration is particularly useful in languages with less rich rhyming structures.

Assonance, where the use of similar vowel sounds within a word rather than similar sounds at the beginning or end of a word, was widely used in [[skald]]ic poetry but goes back to the Homeric epic.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russom |first=Geoffrey |author-link=Geoffrey Russom |url=https://archive.org/details/beowulfoldgerman0000russ |title=Beowulf and old Germanic metre |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-521-59340-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/beowulfoldgerman0000russ/page/64 64–86] |url-access=registration}}</ref> Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Liu |first=James J. Y. |title=Art of Chinese Poetry |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-226-48687-1 |pages=21–22}}</ref> Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout a sentence without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful as a structural element.<ref name=kiparsky/>

====Rhyming schemes====
{{Main|Rhyme scheme}}
[[File:Paradiso Canto 31.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Divine Comedy]]'': [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]] and [[Beatrice Portinari|Beatrice]] see God as a point of light.]]
In many languages, including Arabic and modern European languages, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poetic forms, such as [[ballad]]s, [[sonnet]]s and [[couplet|rhyming couplets]]. However, the use of structural rhyme is not universal even within the European tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional [[rhyme scheme]]s. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wesling |first=Donald |url=https://archive.org/details/chancesofrhymede0000wesl |title=The chances of rhyme |publisher=University of California Press |year=1980 |isbn=978-0-520-03861-5 |pages=x–xi, 38–42 |url-access=registration}}</ref> Rhyme entered European poetry in the [[High Middle Ages]], due to the influence of the [[Arabic language]] in [[Al Andalus]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Menocal |first=María Rosa |author-link=María Rosa Menocal |title=The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History |publisher=University of Pennsylvania |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-8122-1324-9 |page=88}}</ref> Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively not only with the development of literary Arabic in the [[6th century in poetry|sixth century]], but also with the much older oral poetry, as in their long, rhyming [[qasida]]s.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Qasida poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa |publisher=Brill |year=1996 |isbn=978-90-04-10387-0 |editor-last=Sperl |editor-first=Stefan |page=49}}</ref> Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the [[chant royal]] or the [[Ruba'i|rubaiyat]], while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes.<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|1997|pp=71–104}}</ref>

Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if the first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line do not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an AA BA [[rhyme scheme]]. This rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat form.<ref>{{Harvnb|Fussell|1965|p=27}}</ref> Similarly, an A BB A quatrain (what is known as "[[enclosed rhyme]]") is used in such forms as the [[Petrarchan sonnet]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|1997|pp=88–91}}</ref> Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have developed names of their own, separate from the "a-bc" convention, such as the [[ottava rima]] and [[terza rima]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Corn|1997|pp=81–82, 85}}</ref> The types and use of differing rhyming schemes are discussed further in the [[rhyme scheme|main article]].