Calling all fundi who have a grip on metre (meter) in poetry: Craig, Andrea, Charlotte, Tania, just to name a few.
In metered poetry, ‘I’ is stressed when it is preceded and succeeded by an unstressed word or syllable, otherwise it is unstressed.
But what about the other single syllable words? Do they also have chameleon characters, stressed or unstressed according to the poem’s metre? What about the words such as ‘some’, ‘through’, etc that changed from a stressed word to an unstressed word depending on the context in which it is used? I am not even going to analyse the fact that some words are stressed and unstressed in certain syllables depending whether the poem is in American or British English, for example, del-e-te-ri-ous (American), but del-e-te-ri-ous (British). Certain words might contain a primary syllable stress AND a secondary syllable stress, for example, sil-hou-ette (‘ette’ stressed, and ‘sil’ secondary stressed). Then there are the multi-syllable words where all the syllables are stressed, for example, ‘any’.
I find this all very intimidating, especially when I come across a definition where it states: ‘…according to the poem’s meter.’ Does it mean that an unstressed word like an article (a, an, the) can suddenly be a stressed word if the ta-dum-ta-dum should fall on it?
I came across this definition when I recently delved into alliteration:
‘Alliteration has developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to the poem’s meter, are stressed.’
For example: ‘Then can I grieve at grievances foregone’, sonnet 30, by William Shakespeare.
But what about the above mentioned exceptions, or even when we are dealing with regular prose and can’t rely on the poem’s metre to give us a hint as to whether a word or syllable is stressed or not? ‘Try’ and ‘tongue’ alliterates, but ‘to’ doesn’t.
What are your thoughts on this matter?
UPDATE: Thank you for the input. It made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew about meter in relation to Alliteration. I'm never too old to learn.