Showing posts with label Lewis Carroll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lewis Carroll. Show all posts

Monday, April 5, 2010

Consonance

As it turns out,* alliteration is a kind of consonance.  Consonance means the repetition of a consonant in writing, and alliteration means the repetition of a consonant at the beginning of words.

Two things about alliteration and consonance I would like to share;

First, Lewis Carrol, patron saint of this blog, was excellent at using consonance and alliteration, even when he was talking nonsense.  For instance, the poem I love so much from the Walrus and the Carpenter is a good example. He even manages to get an S sound to fit in with SH sounds when the Walrus is listing a few subjects he would like to discuss:
Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing-wax.
Of cabbages and kings.

It should be ridiculously easy to use consonance when you are making up words like "vorpal" to jive with "sword" but I guess you run the risk of people pronouncing them wrong.

The second thing I would like to note about consonance is that is tricks the reader's mind into thinking that you are an excellent writer because it makes things flow better.  (Again, see above nonsense verse.)

And really after that dreadfully didactic diatribe, all I have for you is this pitiful poem giving a different definition of consonance.  But it sounds enlightening because of the employment of alliteration.  (And then consonance there.)  Point proven.

Consonance: constantly conning you into regarding some writing as rhyming.

* I say "as it turns out" because you may be shocked by how little I research these monthly poetry types and devices before I use them.  Then again, maybe you had very low expectations.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

(Tweedle)Dumb Cinematic Vision

Ok, I'm as excited as the next Lewis Carroll-themed blogger about the new Alice in Wonderland movie coming out next year. In fact I have been keeping fairly up to date with everything they have released about the movie.  I am a Tim Burton fan and I can't wait to see what he does with this piece of work!

Random fact: Tweedledee and Tweedledum are the ones that recite the Walrus and the Carpenter poem which I am so fond of that it headlines this blog.

But I do have one objection to a recent release: WTF was he thinking with Tweedledee and Tweedledum?  If the twins from the shining grew up, married the twins from Nothing But Trouble, and drank while they were pregnant, and fed the babies only raw dough, the result would be Tim Burton's idea of Tweedledee and Tweedledum.







Creepy!!!

Tweedle Dee.
Rotund.  Mischievous.
Dancing, singing, confusing. 
Spewing balderdash and gibberish. 
Tweedle Dum.