My mom used to read the children's book, Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut, to me when I was little. (Fun fact: it was authored by Margaret Atwood.) The book is written almost solely in words that begin with P, and the plot contorts wildly to conform to this setup consistently. That was my first introduction to alliteration: contorted, silly, and basically meaningless, but still fun sometimes.
In Hopkins's "The Windhover," I cringed a bit at "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" (2), not realizing at first how integral the poetic device would be to the poem's construction. Of course, it proves to be a main feature, as illustrated below. This isn't juvenile use of alliteration; it's painstaking, and obviously meant to mean... something. I made the mistake of reading someone else's interpretation of the device's effect (which is that the poet's mastery of language is meant to mimic the bird's mastery of flight) before forming my own, and now that's all I can imagine. I wonder if the repeated use of alliteration conveyed anything more to any of my classmates (?).
I'm not sure if this is too much of a stretch, one of the Common Kestrel earned the nickname that was used by Hopkin's (The Windhover) from its ability to seemingly float in mid-air as it searches for its. The constant use of alliteration could be a reference to this ability, as it is what Hopkin's finds most fascinating about the bird. Taken a step further, this could tie the concept of The Windhover to Hopkin's preface dedicating the poem to Christ. Much like the bird who floats and keeps a watchful eye for his prey, Christ watches the world from above the ground, untouchable in the air for those trapped on Earth. Then again, I could just be completely wrong. But given the tool's prominence in the poem, it's pretty definite that Hopkin's is trying to say something through this almost over-use of the tool.
ReplyDeleteHopkins uses alliteration to cover several jobs in his sonnet. First, it serves to strengthen--or depending on how you see it, weaken--the poem's structure. Not only does he make use of the restrictive sonnet form (a personal favorite), but includes difficult feminine end-rhyme and alliteration. Also, don't miss the assonance and consonance in words as well...much of his alliteration leads to further music between words.
ReplyDeleteHopkins intends all this to echo both the concept of the Music of the Spheres and music of the poem's subject. As was--and still is by some--a commonly held belief that music had a direct correlation to the act of creation. In this regard, birds were one of the finest animals embodying both spiritual height as we discussed yesterday in class, and the ability to make their own music--a fact which mimicked the Music of the Spheres. For Hopkins, rhyme and the play between similar sounds best exemplified this avian quality in poetry.
The piling of both nouns and alliterated words is also intended to convey sensory overload. Might be irritating, but so too is a bird's song if listened to for any period of time. Every natural song repeats quite frequently, and depends on repetition as its base. Hopkins noted this as many have, and implemented it linguistically in his poem.
I agree with Danielson, the alliteration is not all that is at play here. For example, dapple-dawn-drawn is three words linked together that all begin with letter D, but the words also utilize assonance in the DA of dapple and dawn, and uses consonance with the WN in dawn and drawn. But yes, he uses a lot of alliteration, but because out of the attention he establishes the sound of each word when read aloud this poem sounds great even though it looks redundant written out. And for the alliteration's meaning doesn't really matter to me. Hopkins was focussing on the music and rhythm of his poem more than structure in my opinion.
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