Free rhyme is a poetic composition also known as white rhyme.
A free rhyme is a composition in which the verses are constructed without there being an assonant rhyme or a consonant rhyme . Also called white rhyme , it can occur in verses with homogeneous measures or with different measures.
Before proceeding with the meaning of the concept, it is necessary to know the etymological origin of the two words that give it shape:
- Rhyme comes from the Latin rhythmus which, in turn, derives from the Greek rhythmós. This word was used to refer to a movement that had a certain cadence.
- Free , on the other hand, is an adjective that comes from the Latin liber and is associated with freedom.
What is a free rhyme
A rhyme is formed from the repetition of different sounds. It is a common technique in poetry that, depending on how this repetition of sounds is developed, is called different things.
The usual thing is that the repetition develops from the stressed vowel that is located in the last place, at the close of the verse. If the rhyme is composed, in at least two verses, by the coincidence of the stressed vowels of the different syllables after the last stressed vowel, we are faced with an assonant rhyme (which is also known as partial rhyme or imperfect rhyme ). This is the most common type of rhyme.
When, after the aforementioned limit of the stressed vowel in the last place, the repetition includes all the phonemes, we speak of consonant rhyme or perfect rhyme .
In the case of free rhyme, it is not tied to stanzas, measures or rules . For example:
A child in the square /
He plays accompanied by his grandfather Matías /
run happy /
observed by ancestral eyes /
clothed /
feeling full in an immortal moment.
As can be seen, these verses do not obey the rules of assonant rhyme or consonant rhyme.
Free rhyme does not follow the rules that assonant rhyme or consonant rhyme does.
More information of interest
In addition to everything stated regarding free rhyme, we can also highlight other information of interest:
- Although it does not follow any pattern in terms of rhyme, the verse that conforms to it does have a pattern that can completely dispense with syntactic and metric units.
- Under its name there are both verses that lack stanzas and are presented with measures of different types and those that do have a measure that turns out to be homogeneous.
Other uses of the concept of free rhyme
In the same way, we cannot forget that free rhyme can be used with a different meaning than the one stated.
So, for example, that is the name of a famous hip hop group and it is also the words that give the title to a radio program that was broadcast on the Radio Libre de Granada network. The latter is a space that used to revolve, above all, around music .