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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. [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.
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.
Some of the most recent analysis proposes that the traditional four-stress model of both Old English and Middle English alliterative verse is a "misapprehension" [9] and that a focus on other apparent rules clarifies the evolution of the form, with Layamon's Brut emerging as a key text in the development of alliterative verse. [9]
The most distinguishing feature of Old English poetry is its alliterative verse style. The Anglo-Latin verse tradition in early medieval England was accompanied by discourses on Latin prosody, which were 'rules' or guidance for writers. The rules of Old English verse are understood only through modern analysis of the extant texts.
Alliteration is usually distinguished from other types of consonance in poetic analysis and has different uses and effects. Another special case of consonance is sibilance, the use of several sibilant sounds such as /s/ and /ʃ/. An example is the verse from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven": "And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple ...
The first lines of the Iliad Great Seal Script character for poetry, ancient China. Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis, "making") 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.
Accentual verse was a traditionally common prosody in Germany, Scandinavia, Iceland and Britain. [2] Accentual verse has been widespread in English poetry since its earliest recording, with Old English poetry written in a special form of accentual verse termed alliterative verse, of which Beowulf is a notable example.