A Study of the Phonological Poetic Devices of Selected Poems of

This paper focuses on the phonological poetic devices found in the poetry of Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. It investigates five patterns of phonological poetic devices. The study is based on randomly selected poems from each poet to obtain a representative sample of the particular poetic devices and tabulates the frequency their usage. The poetic devices under investigation are onomatopoeia, assonance, consonance, alliteration, and rhyme. The paper quantitatively analyzes the occurrence of these phonological poetic devices in randomly selected poems from the works of the two poets to a clear picture of the sound patterns found in the poetry of Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson.


Introduction
Literature uses language as a medium to convey various types of information. Poetry is a type of writing rendered in the medium of language. However, appreciation and study of poetry requires awareness of various literary devices. Literary writing employs various different linguistic devices that weave together words and ideas in order to construct something that has an intentional impact on readers. There are certain elements that a poet can put into a poem to shape it and to connect the reader to the poem. Poets always use poetic devices to reinforce meaning, dictate rhythm, or boost feeling and mood. It is thus important for the reader of a poem to be familiar with the different poetic devices to understand the feelings and thoughts of the poet and enhance the reader's appreciation of the poem's sounds and images. The beauty of poetry is achieved when the reader skillfully masters the ability to grasp the aesthetics of a poem through understanding the different poetic devices. This paper aims to carry out a comparative study of the phonological poetic devices in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning in order to gain an insight into their use of poetic devices.

Statement of the Problem
The problem of concern in this paper is to tabulate the phonological devices in the poetry of Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson in order to conduct a comparative study for the use of said devices in the poetry of the two poets. The researcher attempts to quantify the use of phonological devices in Robert Browning's and Alfred Tennyson's poetry.

Questions of the Study
The study centers on two questions that the researcher would like to investigate: 1) What are the poetic phonological devices used in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning? 2) Which poetic devices are used most frequently in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning?

Significance of the Study
The main objective of the study is to quantify the use of various phonological poetic devices in the works of two nineteenth-century English poets, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. The investigation of the phonological poetic devices forms the basis for a comparative study of the two poets. The findings of the study may prove significant to researchers and students of literature and poetry because they give insights regarding the frequency with which each poet deployed various phonological poetic devices. The researcher believes that the issue of the quantity of the phonological poetic devices found in the work of the two poets is important to the scientific study example, the final consonant sound in (ironic rainbow). Consonance is different from alliteration and assonance in the repetition of the initial consonant in the former and the repetition of the vowel sound in the latter (Greene et al., 2012). Poets use consonance to create sound, mood, and ambience, and to highlight and boost the overall idea of the text (Simmons & Smith, 2010).

Rhyme
Rhyme refers to the resemblance in the sounds of words or syllables that usually come at the end of lines or stanzas (Simmons & Smith, 2010). It refers to the similarity or identity of accented sounds in corresponding position-for example, the words tender and slender (Barnet et al., 2008(Barnet et al., , p. 1592). The pattern of rhyme that comes at the end of each verse in poetry is the rhyme scheme. There are various rhyme schemes applied in poetry. Table 2 shows different types of rhyme scheme. Personification is giving humanistic or animalistic features to abstract concepts (Louck, 2018, p. 74). One example is the personified wind in the following line from "Porphyria's Lover" which is written by Robert Browning: "The sullen wind was soon awake." Personification is frequently used in medieval and neoclassical English poetry (Terry, 2000, p. 218). Allegory and personification are related concepts, because allegorical texts and images always contain personification (Melion & Ramakers, 2016, p. 2). Verses that contain personifications are always attributing human feelings and features to abstractions and inanimate objects. Consider the following example, retrieved from a poem titled "life" by Herbert: (But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they-By noon most cunningly did steal away.) Herbert ascribes a human sign to "time" and shrewdness to "flowers". (Barnet et al., 2008, p. 674)

Metaphor and Simile
Both of these devices depend on comparison, and the method whereby the comparison is performed differentiates between them. In general terms. simile employs explicit comparison, while in metaphor the comparison is implicit. However, both of these devices are tropes that construct meaning by identifying similarity. The comparison performed by either simile or metaphor entails subjects with fundamentally dissimilar natures, but which are similar in one or more respects. Consider these constructions: "Hatim was a lion in the battlefield," and "Hatim was like a lion in a battlefield." The first employs metaphor to express the similarity, while the second uses simile. The two entities being compared in both expressions are altogether different, but have some features in common, such as courage, and ferocity (Corbett, 1965, p. 429).

Method
Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are used in this study. The quantitative analysis is based on random selection of ten poems Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, with five examples drawn from the work of each, in order to get a clear picture of the deployment of the phonological devices in their poetry. The qualitative analysis examines the relative frequency of use of these particular poetic devices in the work of the two poets, forming the basis for a comparative study of the two writers' use of phonological and semantic poetic devices. Table 3, below, shows the distribution of the phonological poetic devices of the selected poems. It catalogs all instances of alliteration, consonance, assonance, and onomatopoeia for each poem, along with each poem's rhyme scheme.  For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

14) To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet (feet-sweet)
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

15) Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, (earth-mirth)
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

11) The grey sea and the long black land; (land-sand)
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

12) And the startled little waves that leap (leap-sleep)
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

13) Three fields to cross till a farm appears; (appears-fears)
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,

14) Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; (beach-each)
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

15) A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch (scratch-match)
And blue spurt of a lighted match, Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

27) For the journey is done and the summit attained, (attained-gained)
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,

28) For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, (brave-rave)
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

Poetic Analysis of the Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson
The table below shows the distribution of the phonological poetic devices of the selected poems. It quatifies all instances of alliteration, consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and defines the rhyme schemefor each poem.   2) Ringed with the azure world, he stands. (5) (r,n,d,th,s) 3

Findings
The tables reveal that the overall quantity of alliteration in the selected poems of Robert Browning is only slightly higher than the measure of similar sounding word usage found in the poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson. The identified use of alliteration in the chosen poems of Robert Browning is 78, compared to 76 for Tennyson. The numbers are similarly close for the use of consonance, with Browning again slightly higher with 289 consonances compared to Tennyson's 284. The use of assonance shows a slightly more pronounced spread; Browning uses the device 133 in the selected works, while there are only 112 assonances in the selected poems of Alfred Tennyson. The use of onomatopoeia for both poets is quite low overall, but significantly higher for Browning in terms of frequency; three of the five selected works by Browning contain one or more onomatopoetic instances, or four times in all, while Tennyson employs onomatopoeia in only a single poem, albeit twice.