add site
services
publishers
database
health videos
toolbar
stats
live show
health store
more stuff
JOIN/LOGIN
| advertise add site services publishers database health videos
| | about toolbar stats live show health store more stuff JOIN/LOGIN |
Alliteration is a literary or rhetorical stylistic device that consists in repeating the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in close succession. An example is the Mother Goose tongue-twister, "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers …" Assonance and consonance are types of alliteration. In poetry, alliteration may also refer to repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to the poem's meter, are stressed as if they occurred at the beginning of a word, as in James Thomson's verse "Come…dragging the lazy languid Line along" [1]. Alliteration is usually distinguished from the mere repetition of the same sound in positions other than the beginning of each word — whether a consonant, as in "some mammals are clammy" (consonance) or a vowel, as in "yellow wedding bells" (assonance); but the term is sometimes used in these broader senses.[citation needed] Alliteration may also include the use of different consonants with similar properties (labials, dentals, etc.) [2] or even the unwritten glottal stop that precedes virtually every word-initial vowel in the English language, as in the phrase "Apt alliteration's artful aid" (despite the unique pronunciation of the "a" in each word) [3]. Alliteration is commonly used in many languages, especially in poetry. Alliterative verse was an important ingredient of poetry in Old English and other old Germanic languages such as Old High German, Old Norse, and Old Saxon. On the other hand, its accidental occurrence is often viewed as a defect.
[edit] Usage in English[edit] Literature and poetryThe relative formal accessibility of alliteration makes it one of the most commonly used literary tools in English, tracing its origins back to Old English and its ancestral languages. Old Germanic poetry was mostly in the form of alliterative verse that relied heavily on consonance akandycend assonance rather than rhyme. An example of Old English alliterative verse, is this passage from the famous poem Beowulf[4]:
Statistical analysis of alliteration use in a Thomas Churchyard poem was used in order to correctly date it in relation to his other works.[5] Statistics can also fuel debates on whether alliterations in literary works were included by chance or by the author’s volition, as in a recent study of 100 Shakespearian sonnets.[6] Alliteration still seems to maintain an important, though perhaps more subtle, part in contemporary English poetry. Books aimed at young readers often use alliteration, as it consistently captures children's interest, as the "powerful Poo-A-Doo powder" and the "Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo" in Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book. Among contemporary literature, crime fiction writer James Ellroy employed alliteration extensively in the second volume of his Underworld USA Trilogy, The Cold Six Thousand, consistent with the novel's hard-boiled tabloid style. [edit] Pop cultureAlliteration survives most obviously in modern English in magazine article titles, advertisements and business names, comic strip or cartoon characters, and common expressions: [7]
[edit] Old English namesAnother use of alliteration in Old English, outside the literary sphere, is found in personal name giving.[11] This is evidenced by the unbroken series of 9th century kings of Wessex named Æthelwulf, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, and Æthelred. These were followed in the 10th century by their direct descendants Æthelstan and Æthelred II, who ruled as kings of England.[12] The Anglo-Saxon saints Tancred, Torhtred and Tova provide a similar example, among siblings.[13] A well-known modern example of alliteration in name giving is the Gracie family. [edit] See also[edit] References
[edit] External links
|
| ↑ top of page ↑ | about thumbshots |
