Alliteration

Last updated

Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels, if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. [1] It is often used as a literary device. A common example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," in which the "p" sound is repeated.

Contents

Historical use

The word alliteration comes from the Latin word littera, meaning "letter of the alphabet". It was first coined in a Latin dialogue by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano in the 15th century. [2]

Alliteration is used in the alliterative verse of Old English poems like Beowulf, Middle English poems like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Old Norse works like the Poetic Edda, and in Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Irish. [3] It was also used as an ornament to suggest connections between ideas in classical Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit poetry. [4] [5] [6] [7]

Today, alliteration is used poetically in various languages around the world, including Arabic, Irish, German, Mongolian, Hungarian, American Sign Language, Somali, Finnish, and Icelandic. [8] It is also used in music lyrics, article titles in magazines and newspapers, and in advertisements, business names, comic strips, television shows, video games and in the dialogue and naming of cartoon characters. [9]

Types of alliteration

There are several concepts to which the term alliteration is sometimes applied:

  1. Literary or poetic alliteration is often described as the repetition of identical initial consonant sounds in successive or closely associated syllables within a group of words. [10] [11] [12] [13] However, this is an oversimplification; there are several special cases that have to be taken into account:
    • Repetition of unstressed consonants does not count as alliteration. [14] Only stressed syllables can alliterate (though "stressed" includes any syllable that counts as an upbeat in poetic meter, [15] [16] such as the syllable long in James Thomson's verse "Come . . . dragging the lazy languid line along".)
    • The repetition of syllable-initial vowels functions as alliteration, regardless of which vowels are used. [17] This may be because such syllables start with a glottal stop. [18]
    • There is ample evidence of alliteration in English among the consonant clusters sp-, st-, and sk-, and between those consonant clusters and the initial s- sound. That is to say, words beginning with s- (without a consonant cluster) can alliterate with words beginning with a consonant cluster beginning with s- (such as sp-, st-, and sk-). Examples of this may be found in the words of Walt Whitman ("Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun"), John F. Kennedy ("same high standards of strength and sacrifice"), and Barack Obama ("Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall") cited below in this article. Despite this evidence, some have claimed, seemingly arbitrarily, that, in English (and in other Germanic languages), the consonant clusters sp-, st-, and sk- do not alliterate with one another or with s-. For example, some have claimed that, while spill alliterates with spit, sting with stick, skin with scandal, and sing with sleep, those pairs do not alliterate with one another. [19] However, the evidence noted above of alliteration between s- and initial consonant clusters beginning with s- seems to render this claim invalid. The same source has stated that its baseless claim regarding s- does not apply to certain other consonant clusters, for example, stating that bring alliterates with blast and burn, or rather that all three words alliterate with one another. [20]
    • Alliteration may also refer to the use of different but similar consonants, [21] often because the two sounds were identical in an earlier stage of the language. [22] For example, Middle English poems sometimes alliterate z with s (both originally s), or hard g with soft (fricative) g (the latter represented in some cases by the letter yogh – ȝ – pronounced like the y in yarrow or the j in Jotunheim). [23]
  2. Consonance is a broader literary device involving the repetition of consonant sounds at any point in a word (for example, coming home, hot foot). [24] Alliteration can then be seen as a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound opens the stressed syllable. [25]
  3. Head rhyme or initial rhyme involves the creation of alliterative phrases where each word literally starts with the same letter; [11] for example, "humble house", "potential power play", [12] "picture perfect", "money matters", "rocky road", or "quick question". [26] [27] A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers".
  4. Symmetrical alliteration is a specialized form of alliteration which demonstrates parallelism or chiasmus. In symmetrical alliteration with chiasmus, the phrase must have a pair of outside end words both starting with the same sound, and pairs of outside words also starting with matching sounds as one moves progressively closer to the centre. For example, with chiasmus: "rust brown blazers rule"; with parallelism: "what in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now droves of victims". [28] Symmetrical alliteration with chiasmus resembles palindromes in its use of symmetry.

Examples of use

Poetry

Poets can call attention to certain words in a line of poetry by using alliteration. They can also use alliteration to create a pleasant, rhythmic effect. In the following poetic lines, notice how alliteration is used to emphasize words and to create rhythm: [29]

Alliteration can also add to the mood of a poem. If a poet repeats soft, melodious sounds, a calm or dignified mood can result. If harsh, hard sounds are repeated, on the other hand, the mood can become tense or excited. [31] In this poem, alliteration of the s, l, and f sounds adds to a hushed, peaceful mood:

Examples from alliterative verse

Source: [33]

  • "In the first age, the frogs dwelt / at peace in their pond: they paddled about ..." (Moralities by W.H. Auden)
  • "Holocaust, pentecost: what heaped heartbreak: / The tendrils of fire forthrightly tasting foundation to rooftree ..." (My Grandfather's Church Goes Up by Fred Chappell)
  • "Chestnuts fell in the charred season, / Fell finally, finding room / In air to open their old cases ..." (Another Reluctance by Annie Finch)
  • "Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; / Landscape plotted & pieced -- fold, fallow, & plough ..." (Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
  • "Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye. / His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet ..." (The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes)
  • "As one who wanders into old workings, / Dazed by the noonday, desiring coolness, Has found retreat barred by fall of rockface ..." (As One Who Wanders into Old Workings by C. Day Lewis)
  • "We were talking of dragons, Tolkien and I / In a Berkshire bar. The big workman / Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe / All the evening, from his empty mug ..." (We Were Talking of Dragons by C.S. Lewis)
  • "We set up mast and sail on that swart ship / Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also / Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward / Bore us out onward with bellying canvas ..." (Canto I by Ezra Pound)
  • "Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising / I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing ..." (Eomer's Wrath by J.R.R. Tolkien)
  • "An axe angles from my neighbor's ashcan; / It is hell's handiwork, the wood not hickory, ..." (Junk by Richard Wilbur)
Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado contains a well-known example of alliterative lyrics:
"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!" Mikado 02 - Weir Collection.jpg
Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado contains a well-known example of alliterative lyrics:
"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"

Lines from other poems

Alliteration combined with rhyme

  • "Great Aunt Nellie and Brent Bernard who watch with wild wonder at the wide window as the beautiful birds begin to bite into the bountiful birdseed" ("Thank-You for the Thistle" by Dorie Thurston)
  • "Three grey geese in a green field grazing. Grey were the geese and green was the grazing." (From the nursery rhyme Three Grey Geese by Mother Goose)
  • "Betty Botter bought a bit of butter, but she said, this butter's bitter; if I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter will make my bitter batter better..." (from the tongue-twister rhyme Betty Botter by Carolyn Wells)
  • "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?" (anonymous tongue-twister rhyme)

Music lyrics

  • "Helplessly Hoping" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young has rich alliteration in every verse.
  • "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan employs alliteration throughout the song, including the lines: "Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free / Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circussands."
  • "Mother Nature's Son" by The Beatles includes the line: "Swaying daisiessing a lazy song beneath the sun."
  • "Spieluhr" by Rammstein includes a spoken line: "Das kleine Herz stand still für Stunden" (eng. "The little heart stood still for hours).
  • "Fairyland Fanfare" by Falconer has a part that alliterates the "l" over 30 times: "Live the legend, live life all alone / Longing to linger in lore / Illuminating a lane / That leads you aloft / You're lost to the lunar lure / Leave the languish / Leave lanterns of lorn / Lend lacking lustre to lies / Liberate the laces / Of life for the lone / Lest lament yet alights“
  • "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon includes the line "Little old lady got mutilated late last night."

Rhetoric

Literary alliteration has been used in various spheres of public speaking and rhetoric. It can also be used as an artistic constraint in oratory to sway the audience to feel some type of urgency, [36] or another emotional effect. For example, S sounds can imply danger or make the audience feel as if they are being deceived. [37] Other sounds can likewise generate positive or negative responses. [38] Alliteration serves to "intensify any attitude being signified". [39] :6–7

An example is in John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, in which he uses alliteration 21 times. The last paragraph of his speech is given as an example here.

"Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on Earth God's work must truly be our own." — John F. Kennedy [40]

Examples of alliteration from public speeches

  • "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." — Martin Luther King Jr. [41]
  • "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth". — Barack Obama. [42]
  • "And our nation itself is testimony to the love our veterans have had for it and for us. All for which America stands is safe today because brave men and women have been ready to face the fire at freedom's front." — Ronald Reagan, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Address. [43]
  • "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". — Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address.
  • "Patent portae; proficiscere!" ("The gates are open; depart!") — Cicero, In Catilinam 1.10.
  • "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." ("Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed") — Cato the Elder
  • "Bleach blonde bad-built butch body" — Jasmine Crockett [44]

Translation can lose the emphasis developed by this device. For example, in the accepted Greek text of Luke 10:41 [45] the repetition and extension of initial sound are noted as Jesus doubles Martha's name and adds an alliterative description: Μάρθα Μάρθα μεριμνᾷς (Martha, Martha, merimnas). This is lost in the English NKJ and NRS translations "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things."

See also

Footnotes

  1. The original in Middle English was: [30]

    For vch mon had meruayle quat hit mene myȝt
    Þat a haþel and a horse myȝt such a hwe lach,
    As growe grene as þe gres and grener hit semed,
    Þen grene aumayl on golde glowande bryȝter.

Notes

  1. Ferber, Michael (2019-09-05). Poetry and Language. Cambridge University Press. p. 66. ISBN   978-1-108-55415-2.
  2. Clarke 1976.
  3. Travis, James (1942). "The Relations between Early Celtic and Early Germanic Alliteration". The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory. 17 (2): 99–105. doi:10.1080/19306962.1942.11786083. ISSN   0016-8890.
  4. Salvador-Gimeno, Marina (2021-12-31). "Alliteration as a Rhythmic Device in Latin Literature: General Clarifications and Proposal for a New Vertical Variant, Alliteration Before or After the Caesura". Studia Metrica et Poetica. 8 (2): 80–107. doi: 10.12697/smp.2021.8.2.05 . ISSN   2346-691X.
  5. Shewan, A. (1925). "Alliteration and Assonance in Homer". Classical Philology. 20 (3): 193–209. doi:10.1086/360690. ISSN   0009-837X.
  6. Langer 1978.
  7. Jha 1975.
  8. Roper 2011.
  9. Coard 1959, pp. 30–32.
  10. Beckson & Ganz 1989.
  11. 1 2 Carey & Snodgrass 1999.
  12. 1 2 Crews 1977, p. 437.
  13. Harmon 2012.
  14. Thomson 1986.
  15. "Alliteration, University of Tennessee Knoxville". Archived from the original on 2013-04-24. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  16. "Definition of Alliteration, Bcs.bedfordstmartins.com". Archived from the original on 2013-07-03. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  17. Scott, Fred Newton (December 1915). "Vowel Alliteration in Modern Poetry". Modern Language Notes. 30 (8): 233. doi:10.2307/2915831. ISSN   0149-6611.
  18. Jakobson, Roman (1963). "On the so-called vowel alliteration in Germanic verse". STUF - Language Typology and Universals. 16 (1–4). doi:10.1524/stuf.1963.16.14.85. ISSN   2196-7148.
  19. "Compressed Video Spatio-Temporal Segmentation", Encyclopedia of Multimedia, Boston, MA: Springer US, pp. 89–90, 2008, retrieved 2023-11-30
  20. "Compressed Video Spatio-Temporal Segmentation", Encyclopedia of Multimedia, Boston, MA: Springer US, pp. 89–90, 2008, retrieved 2023-11-30
  21. Stoll 1940.
  22. Hanson, Kristin (2007-06-18). "Donka Minkova, Alliteration and sound change in Early English (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xix+400". Journal of Linguistics. 43 (2): 463–472. doi:10.1017/s0022226707004690. ISSN   0022-2267.
  23. Johnson, James D. (1978). "Formulaic thrift in the Alliterative "Morte D'Arthure"". Medium Ævum. 47 (2): 255. doi:10.2307/43631334. ISSN   0025-8385.
  24. Baldick 2008, p. 68.
  25. "alliteration". TheFreeDictionary.com.
  26. "Alliteration - Examples and Definition of Alliteration". Literary Devices. 2021-01-29. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
  27. Meredith 2000.
  28. Fussell 2013, p. 98.
  29. Meliyevna, Zebo Nizomova (2021). "Alliteration as a Literary Device". Mental Enlightenment Scientific-Methodological Journal. 3 (03): 162–172.
  30. Tolkien & Davis 1995.
  31. Meliyevna, Zebo Nizomova (2021). "Alliteration as Literary Device". Mental Enlightenment Scientific-Methodological Journal. 3 (03): 162–172.
  32. Techniques Writers Use
  33. "Published Authors of Alliterative Verse". Forgotten Ground Regained. Retrieved 2023-11-29.
  34. Wren 2006, p. 168.
  35. The Mikado libretto, p. 16, Oliver Ditson Company
  36. Bitzer, Lloyd (1968). "The Rhetorical Situation". Philosophy and Rhetoric.
  37. "Literary Devices: Alliteration". Author's Craft. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
  38. Team, N. F. I. (2022-03-04). "Alliteration - Everything You Need To Know". NFI. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
  39. Lanham, Richard (1991). A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 131. ISBN   978-0-520-27368-9.
  40. "4 things that made JFK's Inaugural Address so effective".
  41. "I Have A Dream Speech Analysis Lesson Plan". Flocabulary . 2012-01-11.
  42. "Obama's Alliteration". The Rhetorician's Notebook. 2013-01-21.
  43. "Rhetorical Figures in Sound: Alliteration". americanrhetoric.com.
  44. "Greene called 'bleach blonde bad-built butch body' in House screaming match where 'drinking was involved'". 2024-05-17.
  45. The Greek New Testament, 4th rev ed, ed. Kurt Aland, et al (Stuttgart: UBS, 1983), 247 n 7.

Related Research Articles

In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poetry</span> Form of literature

Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and sound symbolism, to produce musical or incantatory effects. Most poems are formatted in verse: a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate pattern. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym for poetry.

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme.

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds, typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins. Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre and its stress patterns. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ignite is made of two syllables: ig and nite.

In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run together by the omission of a final sound. An example is the elision of word-final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is often pronounced "firs' light". Many other terms are used to refer to specific cases where sounds are omitted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Figure of speech</span> Change of the expected pattern of words

A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from straightforward language use or literal meaning to produce a rhetorical or intensified effect. In the distinction between literal and figurative language, figures of speech constitute the latter. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into schemes, which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and tropes, where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify.

Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar phonemes in words or syllables that occur close together, either in terms of their vowel phonemes or their consonant phonemes. However, in American usage, assonance exclusively refers to this phenomenon when affecting vowels, whereas, when affecting consonants, it is generally called consonance. The two types are often combined, as between the words six and switch, which contain the same vowel and similar consonants. If there is repetition of the same vowel or some similar vowels in literary work, especially in stressed syllables, this may be termed "vowel harmony" in poetry.

Consonance is a stylistic literary device identified by the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different. Consonance may be regarded as the counterpart to the vowel-sound repetition known as assonance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhetorical device</span> Literary technique used to persuade

In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, using language designed to encourage or provoke an emotional display of a given perspective or action. They seek to make a position or argument more compelling than it would otherwise be.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alliterative verse</span> Form of verse

In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and many Middle English poems such as Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Layamon's Brut and the Alliterative Morte Arthur all use alliterative verse.

In Welsh-language poetry, cynghanedd is the basic concept of sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme. The various forms of cynghanedd show up in the definitions of all formal Welsh verse forms, such as the awdl and cerdd dafod. Though of ancient origin, cynghanedd and variations of it are still used today by many Welsh-language poets. A number of poets have experimented with using cynghanedd in English-language verse, for instance Gerard Manley Hopkins. Some of Dylan Thomas's work is also influenced by cynghanedd.

Old Norse poetry encompasses a range of verse forms written in the Old Norse language, during the period from the 8th century to as late as the far end of the 13th century. Old Norse poetry is associated with the area now referred to as Scandinavia. Much Old Norse poetry was originally preserved in oral culture, but the Old Norse language ceased to be spoken and later writing tended to be confined to history rather than for new poetic creation, which is normal for an extinct language. Modern knowledge of Old Norse poetry is preserved by what was written down. Most of the Old Norse poetry that survives was composed or committed to writing in Iceland, after refined techniques for writing were introduced—seemingly contemporaneously with the introduction of Christianity: thus, the general topic area of Old Norse poetry may be referred to as Old Icelandic poetry in literature.

On Translating <i>Beowulf</i> Essay on Old English poetry and metre by J. R. R. Tolkien

"On Translating Beowulf" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the difficulties faced by anyone attempting to translate the Old English heroic-elegiac poem Beowulf into modern English. It was first published in 1940 as a preface contributed by Tolkien to a translation of Old English poetry; it was first published as an essay under its current name in the 1983 collection The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays.

This is a glossary of poetry terms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scheme (rhetoric)</span> Figure of speech that relies on the structure and syntax of sentences

In rhetoric, a scheme is a type of figure of speech that relies on the structure of the sentence, unlike the trope, which plays with the meanings of words.

Vietnamese poetry originated in the form of folk poetry and proverbs. Vietnamese poetic structures include Lục bát, Song thất lục bát, and various styles shared with Classical Chinese poetry forms, such as are found in Tang poetry; examples include verse forms with "seven syllables each line for eight lines," "seven syllables each line for four lines", and "five syllables each line for eight lines." More recently there have been new poetry and free poetry.

Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf, but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition. The most salient feature of Old English poetry is its heavy use of alliteration.

The term alliteration was invented by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), in his dialogue Actius, to describe the practice common in Virgil, Lucretius, and other Roman writers of beginning words or syllables with the same consonant or vowel. He gives examples such as Sale Saxa Sonābant "the rocks were resounding with the salt-water" or Anchīsēn Agnōvit Amīcum "he recognised his friend Anchises" or Multā Mūnīta Virum Vī "defended by a great force of men".

Poetic devices are a form of literary device used in poetry. Poems are created out of poetic devices via a composite of: structural, grammatical, rhythmic, metrical, verbal, and visual elements. They are essential tools that a poet uses to create rhythm, enhance a poem's meaning, or intensify a mood or feeling.

Translating <i>Beowulf</i> Challenges of translating the Old English poem Beowulf

The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, and the scholarly attention given to the problem.

References

-