Literary
Techniques Used in Beowulf
1. Alliteration is the recurrence of initial consonant sounds. The repetition can be juxtaposed (and then it is usually limited to two words):
2. Assonance: similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants:
3. Consonance is a
stylistic device, often used in poetry. It is the repetition of consonant sounds
in a short sequence of words, for example, the "t" sound in "Is
it blunt and flat?" Alliteration differs from
consonance insofar as alliteration requires the repeated consonant sound to be
at the beginning of each word, where in consonance it is anywhere within the
word, although often at the end. In half rhyme, the terminal consonant sound is
repeated. A special species of consonance is using a series of sibilant sounds
(/s/ and /sh/ for example); this is sometimes known
simply as sibilance.
4. Enjambment (also spelled "enjambement")
is the breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause,or sentence) by
the end of a line or between two verses. Its opposite is end-stopping, where
each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line. The term is directly borrowed
from the French enjambement, meaning
"encroachment".
The
following lines from Shakespeare’s the Winter’s
Tale are heavily enjambed:
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I
have
That honourable
grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears
drown.
5. A caesura,
in poetry, is an audible pause that breaks up a line of verse. This may come in
the form of any sort of punctuation which causes a pause in speech; such as a comma;
semicolon; full stop etc. It is also used in musical notation as a complete
cessation of musical time.
Name ______________________ Period _________ Date _____
Identify and list examples of the following in the poem.
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Enjambment
Caesura