Vowel harmony (poetry)

Vowel harmony is repetition of the same vowel or some similar vowels in literary work, especially in stressed syllables. This poetic device can be found in the first line of Homer's Iliad: Menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achilleos. Another example is Dies irae (probably by Thomas of Celano):

In Dante's Divine Comedy there are some stanzas with such repetition.

In the following strophe from Hart Crane's To Brooklyn Bridge there is the vowel [i] in many stressed syllables.

All rhymes in a strophe can be linked by vowel harmony into one assonance. Such stanzas can be found in Italian or Portuguese poetry, in works by Giambattista Marino and Luís Vaz de Camões:

This is ottava rima (abababcc), a very popular form in Renaissance, used in the first place in long epic poems.

There are many examples of vowel harmony in French poetry. Vowel harmony is found in Czech and Polish poetry.

Vowel harmony was discussed by Kazimierz Wóycicki,Roman Jakobson,Jan Mukařovský,Iván Fónagy and Yuri Lotman.

Sometimes vowel harmony is called just assonance.

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