Georges Marciano
Alliteration In The Hands Of Genius Writers
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Tongue-twister
When writers combine stressed syllables that begin with the same consonant sound, they can achieve not only euphonious sounds, but also mark certain beats and cadence within the narrative's rhythm. For example:
Noise, nausea, and loneliness-but that's nothing really new.
The 'n' consonant adds a very distinctive rhythm to the text, adding a halting cadence to the grim, negative text.
In the following example we find double alliteration provided by the consonants 'b' and 'l;' and furthermore more, we could add the sound of the 'p' consonant, which is very close to the sound of 'b.'
Oh, the whiteness of her breasts: poreless, flawless, of breathless beauty, white blossoms tipped with divine blush!
The 1st century A.D. critic and teacher of Rhetoric Demetrius says, "Poetic vocabulary in prose adds grandeur;" but this technique should not be abused because --Alliteration being a poetic rather than a prose device-- there's always the danger of the prose turning purple or rigid.
Edith Wharton in her novel The Custom of the Country uses a disguised alliteration which makes her prose turgid if not stiff:
No one would care to be seen talking to her while Mabel was at her side; Mabel, monumental and moulded while the fashionable were flexible and diaphanous, Mabel strident and explicit while they were subdued and allusive (33).
Jane Austen discreetly injects alliteration in the titles of her novels: Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility; the same may be said of George Eliot's Middlemarch. Other master storytellers use alliteration to achieve special effects such as visceral reactions.
In his The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson uses the "D" sound to produce a revolting effect in the reader, every time he mentions Mr. Hyde:
"... his appearance: something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere ..." (11).
"... had left of that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol ... (65)."
And throughout the novelette, Stevenson continues to use the following words: death, dissection, destitute, despised, decomposed, dwarfish, despicable, disgust, and troglodytic.
Edgar Allan Poe in "The Fall of the House of Usher" sets the mood for the whole story with the "D" sound in the first sentence:
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
Laura Esquivel in her novel Like Water for Chocolate, also uses a similar technique:
Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying, or dominating, Mama Elena was a pro (97).
And Joseph Heller in Catch-22:
The colonel had really been investigated. There was not an organ of his body that had not been drugged and derogated, dusted and dredged, fingered and photographed, removed, plundered and replaced (15).
Another master of prosody and the "d" sound is Nathaniel Hawthorne:
There are some spheres, the contact with which inevitably degrades the high, debases the pure, deforms the beautiful (Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance 101).
The ancient dust, the mouldiness of Rome, the dead atmosphere in which he had wasted so many months; the hard pavements, the smell of ruin, and decaying generations; the chill palaces, the convent bells, the heavy incense of altars; the life that he had led in those dark, narrow streets, among priests, soldiers, nobles, artists, and women; all the sense of these things rose from the young man's consciousness like a cloud, which had darkened over him without his knowing how densely (Hawthorne, Marble Faun, 74).
In gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, the "D" sound is used throughout the book with great efficiency to elicit visceral reactions:
"Ye are to know, Signors, that the Lady Laurentini had for some months shewn symptoms of a dejected mind, nay of a disturbed imagination" (274).
Montoni was discomposed (275).
Notwithstanding his efforts to appear at ease, he was visibly and greatly disordered (275).
"I am not superstitious,' replied Montoni, regarding him with stern displeasure, 'though I know how to despise the common-place sentences, which are frequently uttered against superstition (275).
To hammer in the impression of money and opulence surrounding Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald resorts to the "m" and "n" sounds:
I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew (Fitzgerald 8).
When Professor Henry Higgins-in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion- tutored the Cockney girl Eliza Doolittle to speak like a lady, he used the following statement:
"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."
Not only are tonal and sonority effects achieved, but we can also feel the rhyme and impressiveness of alliteration.
Even in satire and in dialogue, alliteration can be effective as we see in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho:
"You are pure prep perfection," he purrs.
Conclusion
We can say that readers perceive, in some cases subconsciously and more readily, certain sounds, beats, and sonorous combinations. A misbehaving child would certainly stop at the following admonition:
Don't you dare do dat-dammit!
About the Author
Retired. Former investment banker, Columbia University-educated, Vietnam Vet (67-68).
For the writing techniques I use, see Mary Duffy's e-book: Sentence Openers.
To read my book reviews of the Classics visit my blog: Writing To Live
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