| Second is the impact of sound itself upon a hearer, such as the use of guttural sounds, alliteration, and assonance. Unfortunately, "purest profundity" is not a particularly egregious example of the author's ready recourse to arid alliteration, nor is "allergic/allegory/attacks" an isolated instance of acerbating assonance (please pardon the parody). Because they are so monosyllabic, because they are semantically so self-sufficient, and because their shared initial consonant lends itself so well to alliteration, 'damp,' 'dark,' and 'deep' recapture the effect of medieval assonance and impart an insistently rhythmical and musical quality. |
