Apt Alliteration's Artful Aid. Charles Churchill
Alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which aims at imparting a melodic effect to the utterance. The essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds, in close succession, particularly at the beginning of successive words:
"The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires it follows the laws of progression."
(Galsworthy)
or:
"Deep into the darkness peering, long 1 stood there wondering,
fearing, . "Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream
before." (E. A. Poe)
Alliteration, like most phonetic expressive means, does not bear any lexical or other meaning unless we agree that a sound meaning exists as such. But even so we may not* be able to specify clearly the character of this meaning, and the" term will merely suggest that a certain amount of information is contained in the repetition of sounds, as is the case with the repetition of lexical units.
However, certain sounds, if repeated, may produce an effect that can be specified.
For example, the sound [m] is frequently used by Tennyson in the poem "The Lotus Eaters" to give a somnolent effect.
"How sweet it were,...
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the music of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory*"
Therefore alliteration is generally regarded as a musical accompaniment of the author's idea, supporting it with some vague emotional atmosphere which each reader interprets for himself. Thus the repetition of the sound [d] in the lines quoted from Poe's poem "The Raven" prompts the feeling of anxiety, fear, horror, anguish or all these feelings simultaneously.
Sometimes a competent reader, if unable to decipher the implied purpose of the alliteration, may grow irritated if it is overdone and be ready to discard it from the arsenal of useful stylistic devices.
An interesting example of the overuse of alliteration is given in Swinburne's "Nephelidia" where the poet parodies his own style:
"Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast."
When the choice of words depends primarily on the principle of alliteration, exactitude of expression, and even sense may suffer. But when used sparingly and with at least some slight inner connection with the sense of the utterance, alliteration heightens the general aesthetic effect.
Alliteration in the English language is deeply rooted in the traditions of English folklore. The laws of phonetic arrangement in Anglo-Saxon poetry differed greatly from those of present-day English poetry. In Old English poetry alliteration was one of the basic principles of verse and considered, along with rhythm, to be its main characteristic. Each stressed meaningful word in a line had to begin with the same sound or combination of sounds. Thus, in Beowulf:
Fyrst for 5 sewat: flota waes on ó Sum, bat under Üåîãçå. Beornas searwe on stefn stison: streamas wundon, sund wiS sande; secsas baeron on bearm nacan beorhte froetwe..*
The repetition of the initial sounds of the stressed words in the line, as it were, integrates the utterance into a compositional unit. Unlike rhyme in modern English verse, the semantic function of which is to chain one line to another, alliteration in Old English verse was used to consolidate the sense within the line, leaving the relation between the lines rather loose. But there really is an essential resemblance structurally between alliteration and rhyme (by the repetition of the same sound) and also functionally (by communicating a consolidating effect). Alliteration is therefore sometimes called initial rhyme.
The traditions of folklore are exceptionally stable and alliteration as a structural device of Old English poems and songs has shown remarkable continuity. It is frequently used as a well-tested means not only in verse but in emotive prose, in newspaper headlines, in the titles of books, in proverbs and sayings, as, for example, in the following:
Tit for tat; blind as a bat, betwixt and between; It is neck or nothing; to rob Peter to pay Paul;
or in the titles of books:
"Sense and Sensibility" (Jane Austin); "Pride and Prejudice" (Jane Austin); "The School for Scandal" (Sheridan); "A Book of Phrase and Fable" (Brewer).