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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

Topic 3 (session B) - Patterns, Deviations, Style and Meaning > Parallelism, deviation & 'The Brain - is wider than the Sky -' > Task D - Phonemic structure > Our answer

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Extended parallelism: non-literary examples
Extended parallelism: literary examples
Parallelism, deviation and 'The brain - is wider than the sky -'
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Parallelism, deviation and 'The Brain - is wider than the Sky -'

Our answer for task D - Phonemic structure

The rhyme scheme (an extended kind of phonemic parallelism) ABCB for each of the three stanzas, and this repeated pattern helps to underline the fact that the three stanzas are each single sentences and parallel one another in interesting ways.

In the first stanza, 'wider' and 'sky' in line 1 are connected by assonance (another form of phonemic parallelism), thus underlining the comparative grammatical structure which is so important in the poem. This assonantal pattern is matched by 'deeper' and 'sea' in similar positions in stanza 2. But stanza 3, the one which deviates semantically and grammatically from the other two, also deviates phonemically by not having this assonantal pattern.

On the other hand, stanza 3 has a significant /s/ alliteration in the last line, between 'syllable' and 'sound', a phonemic parallelism which helps underline the point that we made, when commenting on other linguistic levels, about the inextricable connection between the two concepts (and hence, by extension between the concepts of the brain/mind and God with which they are being compared).

 


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