I’ve been reading (well, listening. Audiobooks.) to the Dexter series of books and something he does frequently is use alliteration. For example he’ll refer to “dear darling Dexter” or something. I typically think of alliteration as more of a poetic device. What other prose writing have you found that uses alliteration? These are the only novels I can think of where I’ve seen it as anything other than an occasional chance occurrence.
In the musical Li’l Abner, as Evil Eye Fleagle describes his whammy: “The white corpuscles and the red corpuscles stand stock still and stupidly stare at each other.”
Lolita is quite poetic in its prose. Hell, the first few sentences hits the poetry in full stride: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.”
There’s plenty more novels I’ve read that make judicious use of alliteration and poetic devices, but that’s the one that immediately jumps to my head.
I know, it’s poetry not prose, but my favorite alliteration of all time is from Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V scene 1, the play-within-a-play where Shakespeare is poking fun at bad plays:
A line from P.G. Wodehouse’s “Right Ho, Jeeves” I happen to have come across yesterday…Wooster is revealing to Jeeves his plan to spike Gussie Fink-Nottle’s orange juice with gin in order to give him the courage to propose to Madeline Bassett:
“Only active measures, promptly applied, can provide this poor, pusillanimous poop with the proper pep.”
(Oh… in prose… I was so eager to post the below I did not really read the OP. Please ignore what follows)
The Siege of Belgrade
AN Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom.
Every endeavor engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune fighting - furious fray!
Generals 'gainst generals grapple - gracious God!
How honors Heaven heroic hardihood!
Infuriate, indiscrminate in ill,
Kindred kill kinsmen, kinsmen kindred kill.
Labor low levels longest, lofiest lines;
Men march 'mid mounds, ‘mid moles, ’ mid murderous mines;
Now noxious, noisey numbers nothing, naught
Of outward obstacles, opposing ought;
Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed,
Quite quaking, quickly “Quarter! Quarter!” quest.
Reason returns, religious right redounds,
Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds.
Truce to thee, Turkey! Triumph to thy train,
Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish vain victory! vanish, victory vain!
Why wish we warfare? Wherefore welcome were
Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xavier?
Yield, yield, ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell!
Zeus’, Zarpater’s, Zoroaster’s zeal,
Attracting all, arms against acts appeal!
----Alaric Alexander Watts
I just thought of another one. Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks uses alliteration in a number of places. It’s a delight to read aloud.
In all of these, alliteration is used to comic effect. (Comic is not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, but conveying a light tone.) Trying to use it for dramatic or tragic purposes would be much harder, because audiences have been trained for so many years to smile when they see it.
The Lolita quote doesn’t sound comic/light to my ears (it sounds over-the-top passionate, a bit “purple”), although I could entertain that reading (it is a black comedy, after all.) I could see an argument either way, but when I hear alliteration in prose, it often does not convey lightness of tone.
Here’s one example using JK Rowling’s work, how I usually see alliteration (and consonance) in prose, where it does not convey any lightness of tone. Most of the examples given in this thread are over-the-top uses of alliteration that do convey comic character, but alliteration in prose is usually used more judiciously.
Here is an example of alliteration from The Thirteen Clocks as mentioned in my previous post:
“From the sky came the crying of flies, and the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets.”
(Quote accuracy is as I found it in an online search–I don’t have the book in front of me to check it.)
That’s alot of alliteration. And, if you didn’t notice, assonance, and rhyme. (sky/cry/flies—leap/bleat/sheep/creep/knee/deep/sleep/stream.) Yipes. Over-the-top for my tastes.
The whole book isn’t written like that, it’s just the one passage. It comes across as just a fun paragraph to read as you’re going in the book. It would definitely be too much if it was all the time.
I has hoping not. 
Still, the “s” alliteration to simulate the sound of a slithering or hissing snake sounds a bit too conspicuous.
Rowling’s use of alliteration is as dramatic as Stan Lee’s use of alliteration.
There are only twenty-six letters in the alphabet. You are bound to get some of them occurring as initial letters close together occasionally. I am not convinced that anything should count as alliteration unless it is pretty clunkingly obvious, and in particular I am not sure that those first few examples from Rowling should count. Heck, #5 is even counting non-initial letters! (Names like Dudley Dursley, Whomping Willow and Luna Lovegood I will give you.)
Not all of those are the strongest examples, but I would say #3 and #5, to me, are consciously playing with the sounds of the words. At least, when I use alliteration in my writing deliberately, it is more in that sort of manner, and not crudely cramming together overly long strings of words with the same starting consonant.
Who says alliteration need be “dramatic”? It’s just supposed to be euphonious. Good alliteration, in my opinion, should not overly draw attention to itself. I will agree that the Rowling examples aren’t necessarily the strongest, but most of the other examples in this thread are over-wrought (most purposely so for a light-hearted or onomatopoeic effect.) I think the Nabakov example, personally, is quite beautiful without being overbearing.
Dramatic as in serious, opposed to comic. Rowling writes rollicking recreational reads. You might as well search out alliteration in Alice in Wonderland. Serious YA fiction exists, but Rowling doesn’t enter that category.
BTW, Did you read your own link?
[Really, Kenny Wordsmith? Two mistakes in a lesson about prose? Do you not bother to read what’s on screen either?]
If you read what I actually wrote - I know: if you’re not going to read your links… - I said using alliteration is serious prose is harder, not impossible. Which is exactly the same thought as in the link you gave.
njtt is also correct in that it’s almost impossible to write good sentences without any repetition of consonant or vowel sounds. As a writer you want sentences to read well out loud; in fact, that’s a test that writers are taught to check whether their prose is working. That’s simply not the same as alliteration. Otherwise everything becomes alliterative, and therefore the effect is meaningless.
Serious fiction may use alliteration, but never to the level of Rowling. Nabakov certainly doesn’t use it in Lolita past that first sentence, designed specifically to lure the reader in, even though Lolita is obviously a black comedy. Go ahead. Search through any number of serious novels. They don’t read like Rowling.
To state it in so many words, because that seems to be what it takes, I’m not saying that serious writers never use alliteration. I’m saying that they will use it sparingly, for effect. Comic writers will use it more often, also for effect, because it is usually a comic effect.
You might want to re-read Lolita. Alliteration, rhyme, assonance, pretty much every poetic device is used to great extent in Loltia. I just randomly opened to a page, and I get this:
“..she was weeping in my arms;–a salutory storm of sobs” And a few sentences later " …a dot of blackness in the blue of my bliss."
And that’s just a random page (I suppose I got lucky.)
I don’t understand what we’re arguing about here. I’m saying that, too, but I disagree that alliteration is usually a comic effect. Over-wrought alliteration is.