When I started automating detection of alliterative verse, the original hypothesis was to watch the phrases that look like lines of Old English poetry spike up dramatically when the story got to Rohan. Well, that’s not what happens. J.R.R. Tolkien uses alliteration so much that even when we restrict him to Sievers’s five patterns, there’s a constant stream of alliterative lines.
Here’s the density of alliterative lines in the text, as a function of the number of words since the beginning of the Prologue. (I used a 100-word bandwidth, for those who care.) You can see a rise in the frequency of alliteration in Book III, where I expected it. There are also some nice spikes in Book 5, when the Rohirrim make their entrance and when the bard sings a long song in honor of the fallen.
The highest density-spike of alliterative lines comes in “The Uruk-Hai” (III,iii, in dark grey) when Pippin is talking to himself. That was unexpected. In the next chapter, though, Treebeard comes through. He doesn’t provide any high spikes, but the low troughs disappear. Ents never stop alliterating, murmuring in their slow musical voices. (This sentence shows that I allow quite a few unstressed syllables; Type E can have four in a row.)
Book IV also starts out with a lot of alliteration. Sam is talking to himself, this time. For some reason, writing out Sam’s dialogue with formal line breaks and caesurae is hilarious to me:
Numbskulls! You’re nowt but / a ninnyhammer, Sam
Gamgee; that’s what / the Gaffer said.
The lowest density of alliteration is in the chapter “Minas Tirith” (V, i). I noticed this the second time I read the book – the tone changes abruptly from the previous volumes. When they encounter a line like, “For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels…” even teenaged Idiosophers are brought up short by the new voice.
Alliteration is not just part of the story, though. The Prologue has a solid population of alliterative lines. Those bits are Bilbo’s and Merry’s voices, so from this we can derive a consistent theme: The constant background of alliteration is there because the book is narrated by hobbits. When they’re talking to Ents or Rohirrim the rate ticks up about 5%. Elves or Gondorians drag the rate down, roughly the same amount. With a larger bandwidth, smoothing over 2000-word intervals, we lose the poem-spikes, but it’s easier to see the overall changes.
Kate Neville
Lovely, lovely find, but I am not surprised. Tolkien is, after all in all but size a hobbit, and I have always held that alliteration is his native tongue. Even his other poetry exhibit alliterative influence. Tolkien’s talent effects alliteration.
Joe
That sent me off to look at other texts. “Smith of Wootton Major” has one alliterative pattern per 65 words, where LotR has one per 27. I don’t have an electronic copy of “Beowulf and the Critics”, but I can’t see any alliteration there at all. Perhaps JRRT was doing his academic work in a foreign language.
LeesMyth
I’d love to see the breakdown of Sievers types you found in Pippin’s self-talk in the Uruk-Hai chapter. It didn’t jump out at me, just reading them, but I suppose there’s a lot of room for interpretation…
Joe
I guess I should have said it more clearly: the narrator picks up the alliteration more than Pippin himself:
fangs close to his face he had
way they were to take and what should be done
I have spoken you have spoken more
ideas came from did they come
they might agree with me with grishnakh
crook legged creature very
from the north they had drawn their knives and swords
I’ve got a chance a gleam of hope
of steel against his skin the orcs
but some of the northerners were still unwilling
daring to breathe he drew the knot
suddenly he was thrown on to the stony floor again
horsebreeders will hear of us by
you wont like though they wont spoil your
on his feet pippin fell down
clapped and hooted cant take his medicine
in sport he needed speed and had to humour
LeesMyth
Thanks!