The Invention of Rhyme: A Global History
Rhyme feels like an eternal feature of poetry, but Homer, Virgil, and the Beowulf poet never used it. This article traces rhyme's surprising history—from its origins in ancient Chinese and…
Tag: alliteration
Alliteration & Assonance as a Simple Cipher
Ever wondered if a poem could hold a secret password? This post explores a hypothetical cipher where the key isn't a number, but a pattern of sounds, using poetic devices…
The Sound of Old English: How Was Beowulf Spoken?
We can read the words of Beowulf, but what did this ancient ancestor of English actually sound like? By using linguistic reconstruction, we can uncover the lost phonetics of Old…
Poetic Insults: The Lost Art of Flyting
Before the diss tracks and rap battles of today, Norse and Anglo-Saxon warriors sharpened their wits with a different kind of verbal combat: flyting. This lost art of poetic insults…
Word Avalanches: Sentences That Repeat the Same Sound
Word Avalanche: Sentences That Repeat the Same Sound In the colorful landscape of linguistics and playful word usage, a phenomenon known as the “word avalanche”...