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Acrostics constitute an interesting technique usually employed in verse language but also in prose, whereby the first letters (sometimes the initial syllable or even an entire word) in each line or word form a word or phrase, a name or even a message that the composer wishes to hide or reveal skillfully. Acrostics form part of language play but also a mechanism in the artistic usages of the language. Normally, they are employed in gnomes, riddles, and other such didactic compositions, in hymnal poetry, both biblical and post-biblical (particularly frequent in the Middle Ages), but also in secular praise poetry, love songs, inscriptions, or are exploited as rhetorical figures. In addition to their artistic effect, acrostics may also aim at entertaining through the skillful manipulation of expressive material in ways that amuse the readers or listeners by creating aural or visual images of rare esthetic beauty. In this sense, acrostics may also serve as techniques of cryptography and steganography, having an anagrammatic and symbolic function by encrypting messages, names, and other such things.
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Search for other papers by Georgios K. Giannakis in
Current site
Google Scholar
(4,201 words)