Alliteration as a mechanism of cohesion: a new way of concatenation of adjacent lines in Latin poetry

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the cohesive function of Latin alliteration in cases in which it serves as an element for linking together the hemistichs in the same line or hemistichs in adjacent lines. At an extra-versal level, three forms of alliterative cohesion are distinguished: 1) by enjambment (the words sounding the same at the start that belong to the same syntactical unit flow over the limits of the line); 2) by vertical correspondence (the words sounding the same at the start are placed in successive lines where they occupy the same metric position); 3) by concatenation at the end of each line and the beginning of the subsequent line (… X/X… X/X…, etc., or … X/X… Y/Y…, etc.). The alliterative cohesion by concatenation at the end of each line and the beginning of the subsequent line has been studied due to its systematic use in ancient Irish poetry, but not in Latin, where, as it is shown in this article, there is evidence of the phenomenon. The existence of this cohesive procedure in Latin is verified in poets from different literary periods: Lucretius, Vergilius, Silius Italicus, Prudentius and Claudius Claudianus. This type of studied concatenation is also found in Greek poetry (Homer, Hesiod, and Aeschylus). This leads us to surmise that it is a phenomenon inherent to the Indo-European tradition.