Alliterative 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.^[1] 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] 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.^[3][4][5][6]

While alliteration is common in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form.^[7]: 41 However, structural alliteration appears in a variety of poetic traditions, including Old Irish, Welsh, Somali and Mongol poetry.^{[8][9][10][11]} The extensive use of alliteration in the so-called Kalevala meter, or runic song, of the Finnic languages provides a close comparison, and may derive directly from Germanic-language alliterative verse.^[12]

Unlike in other Germanic languages, where alliterative verse has largely fallen out of use (except for deliberate revivals, like Richard Wagner's 19th-century German Ring Cycle^[13]), alliteration has remained a vital feature of Icelandic poetry.^[14] After the 14th Century, Icelandic alliterative poetry mostly consisted of rímur,^[15] a verse form which combines alliteration with rhyme. The most common alliterative ríma form is ferskeytt, a kind of quatrain.^[16] Examples of rimur include Disneyrímur by Þórarinn Eldjárn, ''Unndórs rímur'' by an anonymous author, and the rimur transformed to post-rock anthems by Sigur Ros.^[17] From 19th century poets like Jonas Halgrimsson^[18] to 21st-century poets like Valdimar Tómasson, alliteration has remained a prominent feature of modern Icelandic literature, though contemporary Icelandic poets vary in their adherence to traditional forms.^[19]

By the early 19th century, alliterative verse in Finnish was largely restricted to traditional, largely rural folksongs, until Elias Lönnrot and his compatriots collected them and published them as the Kalevala, which rapidly became the national epic of Finland and contributed to the Finnish independence movement.^[20] This led to poems in Kalevala meter becoming a significant element in Finnish literature^[21][22] and popular culture.^[23]

Alliterative verse has also been revived in Modern English.^[24][25] Many modern authors include alliterative verse among their compositions, including Poul Anderson, W.H. Auden, Fred Chappell, Richard Eberhart, John Heath-Stubbs, C. Day-Lewis, C. S. Lewis, Ezra Pound, John Myers Myers, Patrick Rothfuss, L. Sprague de Camp, J. R. R. Tolkien and Richard Wilbur.^[26][25] Modern English alliterative verse covers a wide range of styles and forms, ranging from poems in strict Old English or Old Norse meters, to highly alliterative free verse that uses strong-stress alliteration to connect adjacent phrases without strictly linking alliteration to line structure.^[27] While alliterative verse is relatively popular in the speculative fiction (specifically, the speculative poetry) community,^[28][29] and is regularly featured at events sponsored by the Society for Creative Anachronism,^[28][30] it also appears in poetry collections published by a wide range of practicing poets.^[31]