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Alliterative verse uses repetition of consonant sounds within a line to create structure and pattern in poetry, as opposed to rhyme schemes. It was popular in ancient Anglo-Saxon writing and medieval poetry, with examples including Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Accents were important, with stressed syllables used for alliteration. Alliterative verse can still be found in some poems.
Alliterative verse is a form of poetry written in a style guided by alliteration and the number of accents within a line. The main element of alliterative verse is the poetic device called “alliteration”, which is a repetition of consonant sounds in a line or sentence. This is in contrast to poetic verse which uses a rhyme scheme and typically includes the number of syllables within each line as a structure.
For example, the line “light and lilting, the lady jumped on the windowsill” has a clear repetition of “l” sounds at the beginning of five different words in it; alliterative verse often used similar, albeit more rigidly structured, patterns to create strong organization within a poem. Alliterative verse was often used in ancient Anglo-Saxon writing, including works from the 11th century, and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity by some medieval poets. Classic examples of this style of poetry include Beowulf, which is one of the oldest works in the English language, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Many works of poetry are created as rhymed verse, where the use of rhyming words and phrases is the primary structure of the poem. In something like “I saw a frog / jumped on a dog / and was surprised to find / it wasn’t a log,” the structure of the poem is built on a simple rhyme scheme. Every line of this short poem, except the third, ends with a rhyming word. This creates a rhyme scheme described as “A, A, B, A” where lines designated “A” rhyme with each other.
Alliterative verse, on the other hand, uses alliteration between and within lines to create structure and pattern throughout the poem. For example, a series of lines might be written as “The lady jumped and landed on the floor / Her sheathed sword struck her enemy.” In this example, the first line uses a repeating “l” sound for alliteration, while the second line features “s” sounds. Each line ends with a word that does not continue this pattern, but between the two lines these words are alliterative.
This is a simple example of how alliterative verse can be composed, although early works of English and Germanic poetry often included more elaborate patterns. Accents were important in these poems, as the stressed syllable before a vowel in a word was the sound used in alliteration. This way multisyllabic words could be included, with the alliteration coming from the second syllable if it was the stressed sound. Alliterative verse can still be found in some poems, although rhyme schemes are typically more common.
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