Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Why is the poem "The Frog and the Nightingale" considered a musical poem?

A poem is musical in nature. This is most apparent when a
poem is read out loud so that the literary devices that have been employed by the author
are easier to hear. For example, the rhyming of a poem is much more noticeable when we
hear the poem. For instance, Edgar
Allan Poe's poetry, including "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven" both make excellent use of
the rhyme (as well as repetition). In "The Frog and the Nightingale" by Vikram Seth, the
end rhyme is heard with "frog" and "bog," "dawn" and "awn,"
etc.


Sometimes a poem will sound musical because of the
rhythm the writer creates within it. Most of the poem's lines have either three or four
accented syllables. This gives the poem a rocking feeling when it is read—aloud. The
stress of the first two lines, as noted below, provides a sense of motion back and
forth—the words/syllables that are bolded carry the stress and create
movement:


readability="5">

Once-u-pon-a-time-a-frog


Croaked-a-way-in-Bin-gle-Bog



It
is these elements that make the poem musical, as well as the fact that it is all about
music. However, other types of devices will also add to the musical quality of a poem:
especially when the ear picks up patterns, such as repetition, alliteration, consonance,
assonance, and onomatopoeia. A few of these are used in the poem. For example,
alliteration, which the repetition of a [consonant] sound repeated
in a group of words—at the beginning of each word—is heard
with:


readability="6">

"crass
cacophony," "foot the
frog" and "Toads and
teals and
tiddlers"



Onomatopoeia,
a word that represents or mimics the sound it stands for, is heard with "clapped" and
"croak."


We hear assonance in the following phrases: the
"i" provides repetition of the same vowel sound, which is
assonance:


readability="5">

"night a
nightingale" and "splendid
baritone"



Consonance,
the repetition of a consonant sound in, or at the end of, words in a group, is found in
the following line:


readability="6">

"had
ended,
clapped" and "Greatly
flattered"



All
of these examples provide sounds that the ear catches, that make the poem
musical.

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