One of the most common themes in literary texts, including songs, plays, poems and film, is that of love and romance. Stereotypically, the storyline is constructed in a manner that either results in tragedy, or the central characters living in a seemingly infinite loving and perfect relationship. Possibly the most classic example of this is Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet. The story of two star crossed lovers who meet and fall in love at first sight only to have their forbidden love end in tragedy at the hands of their feuding families. On the contrary, Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, is a definitive fairytale romance where boy meets girl and they fall in love, only to be faced with some form of adversity which the male heroin must overcome to save his helpless partner so they can live happily ever after. In today’s changing society, where not only love, but life itself seems more complicated, gender roles are increasingly being challenged. These stereotypical depictions are often confronted in contemporary texts, particularly song lyrics. Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons does not adhere to traditional…show more content… In Little Lion Man, each verse has 7 lines, with an ABAB rhyming pattern in the first four lines. The chorus uses a rhyming scheme of AAABB. These rhyming schemes amplify the mood of regret and sorrow throughout the song. The language and imagery used throughout the song play key roles in how the listener interprets the song. A Synecdoche is a rhetorical trope, and a figure of speech in which a term that denotes one thing is used to refer to a related thing. Mumford has used a lot of synecdoche throughout the song, which is a major reason there are multiple interpretations of the song’s meaning. The use of synecdoche’s in the lines, ‘Your boldness stands alone among the wreck,’ and ‘little lion man,’ force the listener to consider their meaning, and how this could have been
