Alliterative Analysis Of Robert Frost's Poetry

Alliteration is a common device in almost all poetry.It used to be an important poetic device but is now a subsidiary embellishment in both prose and poetry.It usually denotes the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables,but sometimes the repetition of initial vowel sounds is also referred to as alliteration.In its simplest form,it reinforces one or two consonantal sounds,as in Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:"The woods are lovely,dark and deep." One alliteration of double consonant cluster is as follows,lines 28 and 29 of Frost's The Thatch: "My greater grief was by so much reduced/As I thought of them without nest or roost." A more complex pattern of alliteration is created when consonants both at the beginning of words and at the beginning of stressed syllables within words are repeated,as in Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken:Then took the other,as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;The consonant/(?)/in the first line may be neglected,but it does form an important feature of Frost's alliterative devices.A typical alliteration of initial vowel sounds can be found in Robert Frost's The Need of Being Versed in Country Things:"And a pump flung up an awkward arm."Chinese language emphasizes tonality,thus the use of alliteration is rare and even cases of alliterations are not as well-perceived as those in English.There was a debate upon choosing an appropriate Chinese equivalent for alliteration.Shuang sheng seems to be a better match but much more people favor tou yun,which literally means just head rhyme or initial rhyme. Alliteration is abundant in English idioms,proverbs,tongue twisters,book titles,news headlines,advertisements,etc.It has a value of attention which helps people to memorize or arouses viewers interest.Up till now no research upon the alliterative features of one author has ever been conducted to outline the panorama of alliterations.Therefore,this subject of study solely centered around the alliterative features of poetry works done by Robert Frost,one of the most popular poets in American poetry,should earn a place in the perspective of alliterative study.Gui Cankun classified and clarified all the consonant sounds,and especially the sound clusters in his book,Applied Phonology of American English(1985:106～112).As consonants make up the majority of alliterations,his model of classification is adopted to analyze the range of Robert Frost's alliterative devices.All the examples are selected manually without the aid of any computerized statistical softwares.However,much efforts have been undertaken in choosing the most typical alliterations under each category to demonstrate Robert Frost's poetic style.For any further study,computerized softwares,which are now still in development especially in the area of literary study,must be applied as an objective tool of analysis and statistics.On the other side,more comprehensive study must be done upon Robert Frost's poetry which is beyond my capabilities and comprehension at present stage.Anyway it will be much rewarding to this author if this thesis contributes to the solution whether shuang sheng or tou yun is more appropriate in translation of alliteration into Chinese,and that alliterations in English literature as well as in other usages are well appreciated by English learners.