AlliterationAlliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. An example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliterative verse and Alliterative Revival The word alliteration comes from the Latin word littera, meaning "letter of the alphabet". It was first coined in a Latin dialogue by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano in the 15th century. Alliteration is used in the alliterative verse of Old English, Old Norse, Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Irish.
KenningA kenning (Icelandic: chɛnːiŋk) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English poetry. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including rímur) for centuries, together with the closely related heiti. A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant.
Homeric QuestionThe Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and their historicity (especially concerning the Iliad). The subject has its roots in classical antiquity and the scholarship of the Hellenistic period, but has flourished among Homeric scholars of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
EpithetAn epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It can also be a descriptive title: for example, Pallas Athena, Phoebus Apollo, Alfred the Great, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Władysław I the Elbow-high.
Accentual verseAccentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed, such as English, as opposed to syllabic verse which is common in syllable-timed languages, such as French. Accentual verse is particularly common in children's poetry; nursery rhymes and the less well-known skipping-rope rhymes are the most common form of accentual verse in the English Language. The following poem, "Baa Baa Black Sheep," has two stresses in each line but a varying number of syllables.
