Adil Jussawalla by Bijay Kant Duibey

Adil Jussawalla (1940-),
Isn’t He Himself The Missing Person That We Are Searching,
Trying To Locate?

BY:

Bijay Kant Dubey

               Ph.D.(D.H.Lawrence), M.A. (English, History & Political Science) 

email: poetbkdubey@gmail.com

Partition's people stitched

Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.

An opened people, fraying across the cut

country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,

Brokering and bays, refugees' harbour and port,

Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work

Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,

Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,

come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,

Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,

Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,

Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,

Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland's histories.

           ---- Sea Breeze, Bombay by Adil Jussawalla

Adil Jussawalla who wrote verse intermittently swapping in between journalism and creative writing, career and profession, passionately and being disenchanted with too is perhaps, if we are not wrong, the missing man of Indian English poetry, the no-man, the absentee poet appearing before after a thirty-five year break and it does not mean at all that he did not, but forgot to enter into those scribbles, slips, chits and bits of paper jotted down in a haste, making a fair copy of those, arranging them and sending to press, it was journalism and the engagement to it which perhaps disrupted the progress of his poesy, intercepted him during the poetic ebb and tide and interrupted the flow, as he indulged in the column-writing as was Khushwant Singh of syndicated columns, the master of trivia, serving salt, chutney, sauce and pickle; spicing the things so took he to. While in England as a young man, he wrote down, lay his hands on poetry as did Nissim Ezekiel, taking it to be his future home, but Bombay and its memories like the Dover Beach drew him back and he returned back to India as did Matthew Arnold felt for, as had Wordsworth been attached to Tintern Abbey and Westminster Bridge viewing London. Jussawalla wrote verses, surfaced and went missing; again re-surfaced to register his presence in the literary arena to show that he wrote poetry, did appreciate it and still does he admire it; he has not left contributing too, picking from the past, the forgotten diaries and note-books. A poet Eliotesque and Audenesque, he is a poet of the hollow man , modern man depicted as hollow man, shallow and hollow from his within; a poet of broken statements and jazz lyrics of life. The dull monotony of drab life is the rhythm of his verse; the music of his poetry, all that is in the modern world of urban spaces and his poetic pilgrim went on searching unto like the Chaucerian protagonist of Kolatkar’s Jejuri. The sea fever of Masefield and the stranger looking upon the island of Auden lured  him and he turned to the seaside like Nissim locating the history of the island, the river having changed the course. A missing person, Adil is like the missing fellow of Jayanta Mahapatra.

One from the Parsi quartet, Katrak, Patel and Daruwalla, he is a poet of the urban space writing about the urban people and the landscapes inclusive of the city squares, centres, parks, restaurants, gyms, shopping malls, multi-complexes; airports, sea beaches, resorts, picnic spots; tours, travels, visits; skyscrapers, stories, lifts and life pulsating in flats; theatres, night parties, art galleries and flower exhibitions, we mean modern life and culture, the music of it oblivious of Indian thought, culture and tradition, religion, spirituality and philosophy, metaphysics, theology and cosmology, life-style, mannerisms and ethics though something of it is readily available in him. Land’s End is the first book which appeared in 1962 from Writers Workshop, Calcutta and the matters of it were mostly written in England and Europe. Missing Person is the second work which saw the light of the day in 1976 from Clearing House, Bombay. The Right Kind of Dog is the third work which appeared in 2013. Trying to Say Goodbye published in 2012 is the book for which Jussawalla wins the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2014.

It is really difficult to pick up the poems of Adil Jussawalla, less published, less brought out and even if were they, remaining out of stock. Once even P.Lal too declined to send though he agreed to mail the xerox copies if paid. Similar is the case with most of the one or two-book writers of Indian English verse which but sheds a very poor light, as the critics, readers, editors and referees had been quite disinterested and it did not find favour with, as the matter was substandard, below the mark and qualitatively poor. Most of the poets and poetesses whom P.Lal introduced and we are reading today were not so as they are now. The British-text read older scholars frowned upon working on Indian English verse, a study in slender volumes and minor voices, unavailable and inaccessible, finally traceless, nowhere to be found again. If we go through the first collected anthology and volume of P.Lal, we shall come to notice it how puerile and childish had it been the experimentation with modern Indian English verse! The publishing houses liked it not to publish the poems by the practicing immature poets and poetesses working as derivative copycats, presenting as the parodies of the famous poems in Indian English. Even in the books, we do not find more than the introduction of the missing man. Frankly speaking, Indian English poetry is a study of poems rather than the books of poesy. A Ph.D. on an Indian English poet is a patch-work of matter collected sporadically and the researcher reads not the books, but the stray poems of the author. Who has tried to come up with what Adil Jussawalla actually means or tries to say in his poetry? What is that he seems to be sharing with or wants to communicate to? There should not be any deviation from the main crux of constructive criticism.

Land’s End is the first book of poems which he published at the age of 22. All the poems of Land’s End have been written in England and Europe the collection ends with white peacocks which he saw in Oxford at Merton Street. Geneva is a poem of the place; A Bomb-site Seen from a Railway Bridge is all about an incident. A Letter for Bombay is another poem to relate to Bombay and his connections with it and from it the kernel of Missing Person starts with. As Jussawalla had sailed for England at seventeen so the things started materializing with that in its trail to the culmination reached in Land’s End. Alienation after alienation deepened it inside, the first that of being a Parsi, the second that of the alienated Indian writers’ nuances and rhythms of life. Things generally change they not if nurtured along habitually or inherited so is the case with him, as goes the adage, The child is father of man, another as, Style is man. The same is with Adil Jussawalla what he started in Land’s End remained with him unto the last. The style remains the same, the way of expression. Only the contents have been added in.

Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay, Nine Poems On Arrival, etc. are from the second collection Missing Person of the poet. Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay is an oft-quoted poem from the same as are Dover Beach and Home Thoughts From Abroad of Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning. Nostalgic and homesick not, but quite discerning Adil is here returning home as did they, Nissim and Parthasarathy from London and Leeds. Part I scene from the Missing Person is a soliloquy or a monologue of the modern man at a loss and bewildered, with the selves torn apart and discussing. The crisis in soul takes over and he keeps babbling to himself. There is disintegration in Missing Person which has been written intermittently. Missing Person is full of political statements and politics of poetry lies therein.

Sea Breeze as a poem reminiscent of the Partition people; the whirlwind that took over the sub-continent, uprooting and blowing into pieces that came its way. A tornado was it; an upheaval full of convulsions and repercussions. The loss of lives, in terms of casualties was unimaginable as the people were doomed to die just for the lust for power; the chair to sit, the nation was ignored, selfishness was fed with power-grabbing. Sind was partitioned, Punjab was, Bengal was, Kashmir was as were Germany and Korea, one brother from another and the agonies of the Partitioned people the judges and the peace-brokers could never know them resulting in the flux of the huge refugees. People came to Bombay seeking shelter and refuge and Bombay gave to so did Delhi with the camp areas. This is the history of the island that is Bombay where the Longfellowian brothers go about telling of their distant shipwrecks. Similar was the coming of the Tibetan refugees coming in droves in the attire of their own.

The buzz and bristle continues to keep clamouring for; hectic activity continuing as the things do not come to a close in Bombay. The harbours with the ports and posts and dockyards keep receiving the ships sailed for destinations, going or returning and as thus the city keeps busy with. The sea breeze comes and goes, refreshening it all, but unmindful of what it is happening within. Instead of drawing lessons from, still the communities draw the sword in enmity, vengeance or hatred, but settle not the old scores regressing to the background finally. Mankind, torn and battered, seems to be wailing in hiding. It does not need anything, just a few words of sympathy and affection.

The vast expanse of the sea and the breeze blowing over is Nature cool and calm and refreshening while the troubles brewing in adjustment, relationship, amity and settlement the other side of the picture. The poem though Wordsworhtian reminds us of The Peshawar Express of Krishan Chunder, The Refugee of Khawaza Ahmad Abbas and Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh. Sea Breeze as a poem is a fine piece of Partition literature rarely to be found elsewhere.

Trying To Say Goodbye is the work for which Adil Jussawalla gets the Sahitya Akademi award for the year 2014 and it is really a rewarding experience to go through the vision and reflection of his poetry. Written as the third poetic venture in 2012, it is a book to be reckoned with, but the same sort is carried forward in the fourth to follow into its footsteps. Adil Jussawalla is trying to say goodbye to poetry, but poetry has not to him. The title poem Trying To Say Goodbye  is about the divorce in the air, but the woman is unable to part ways as for different reasons binding upon is the thing of discussion herein, as the poet reveals it through an interview published in a paper. Her Safe House from Trying to Say Goodbye is a depiction of an aged lady walking down the corridors all alone with the kitchen lying sonless. Eliotesque and Audensesque, he keeps plodding, prodding and ploughing as did Eliot in The Hollow Men and Auden in Look, Stranger. Arnold’s Dover Beach and Masefield’s Sea Fever he cannot forget. The pictures hang over and the images are drawn. A Parsi poet of Bombay his mind can go nowhere except alienation, rootlessness, homelessness, settlement, rehabilitation, diaspora and displacement. A modern poet he has but shallow modernity and sham living to pride over and express. London visits leave him not and he recalls them; the house he has not forgotten though may be corroded with the feeling of alienation and rootlessness which he suffers from. Urdu Lesson and Wahab Sahab are Urdu allegiances which he seems to express it here. Materials as a poem is divided in five and is on objects as they help an artist with clay, cloth, wood, iron and marble. Trying To say Goodbye is not the swan-song of Adil Jussawalla, but the book to widen the horizon and range of his poetry. House, Artist, Clay, View, etc. are very good poems. Somewhere the poet is easily comprehensible, somewhere very terse and complex. People may admire Land’s End, but the music of modernity which he hears them in England is jarring and jazzy enough. 

We do not know it why Adil has given the name, The Right Kind of Dog? Is it that the dogged life he admires it not and recommends for a life with pressure and freedom? The book intended for the young readers or the adults has made a name for the writer. To say it rightly it is more about him than them. The book is a work of childhood and adolescence which the poet is recalling and remembering. William Blake and Thomas Hood keep filling his emotions and making for the loss. The Thoughts of an Eight-Year-Old Girl is actually the internal muttering of a girl when she is asked to eat this or that which she does not like to take at all. Blake’s The Little Black Boy and Shakespeare’s description of the schoolboy in Seven Ages of Man can enlighten on the topic in hand. Adil seeks to draw from the innocence and ignorance as discussed by Blake in Songs of innocence and Songs of experience. It is innocence which but purifies and it is experience which but spoils and spills. A Song of Ekalvya is a very beautiful poem indeed where the poet talks about Ekalavya gifting his thumb to the guru Dronacharya as his guru-dakshina. How was the guru and how the disciple? Compare him with the pupil of today; not a direct student, but an indirect one like Kabir of Ramanand lying on the ghats of Benares to be touched by the feet of the teacher and the words which spelt he after stumbling over, Ram-Ram became the guru-mantra for him to attain perfection, reach the greater heights. On My Feet, The Way I Walked Abroad, A Boy in the Forties: Remembering Andrew Thompson, Two from  British India, Another Dog, Our Poets And Their Inspirations, Imagination, Materials, Fire Temple, Christmas Card, Song for a Seller of Flutes, One-Armed Man, Shoes, Jugalbandi, History Lesson, Greed, Famine And War, Waiting Room, The Good-for-Nothing, After Zebunissa, My Fold-up Poem, etc. are the poems.  On reading his Ekalvya, Chakravyuha and others, we doubt whether Adil himself is not Abhimanyu, Ekalavya or Karna of modern Indian English poetry? The poet sings the dsongs of liberty and freedom in The Right Kind of Dog rather than living a dogged life under the strict obedience and supervision. Greed, Famine and War are like the seven deadly sins or sisters alike. Aurangzeb’s daughter Zebunissa was a poetess which but he himself could not take to in his bigotry and he did imprison her which King Midas too could not have done. The thing included in The Right Kind of Dog is similar to that discussed in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Dalit literature. As he is a Parsi so the Partition literature, Dalit literature and the Diaspora dais soothe the poetic self and the psyche of the poet. His ethos and historicity, he has none around him to share with. The language too he has forgotten. So, what is culturally left with him? Imagination is like a glass of rum to him and he journeying seating on the Ship of Liberty. His Irani heart, Zoroastrian soul, he has to lay them bare, but the situations and scenes are different. There is something he opens, something that he hides, suppresses and seals. Poetry and boulders seem to be doing a jugalbandi as both of these have been kept neglected, but are of use no doubt. The pathos of living can be felt in the poem, One-Armed Man, which we keep marking, averting the gaze. Such a sort of depiction it is there in Daruwalla’s Bombay Prayers. The situations and scenes of life are difficult to be said. If Anand is a novelist of the have-nots, the downtrodden and the underdogs, so is Jussawalla here in this collection of poems. But he has perhaps left Daruwalla’s Draupadi and Karna and Nirala’s Indian widow.

In one poem entitled Turning Seventy, he talks of his body a pile of papers left on a bench to be burnt; his body a metal tube of paste, wires and clips. But the breeze in the garden is refreshing indeed to be forgetful of anything that hangs over. Chakravyuha and Eklavya are excellent poems from the pen of Adil which can outdo many an exponent. Such is the verve and relevance of the pieces. Chakravyuha is long and engaging. Colour Problems in the Family is all about the gossips and talks happening within the periphery and circle of a Parsi family, taking migration and domicile into consideration and its reflection over the skin.

As a poet, he is not so prolific, but is still a great modernist, a modern not, going beyond it and its frontiers, as he knows the politics of the language and does it so often, construing and coming across the parallel lines. The feeling of alienation, rootlessness, homelessness ails him as well as adds to his frustration combined with the angst and bewilderment of the age. The identity crisis, whether we accept or not, he feels it, as his Parsi self often twitches for a disclosure, but the riddles of the Partition cannot be loosened so easily as the lust for power had been predominant over and the leaders quarrelled for the chair, not for the country, tried to find favour with rather than giving solace and consolation to the dislocated and dismantled people. The refuge and shelter in India, loss of the mother tongue, the Partition and displacement, are the things of his brooding. A search for identity and tradition combined with a sense of alienation from his own ethos, history ad tradition marauds the poetic self of the poet and he craves for, yearns for all these but in a different format, a modernistic voice appreciating the jazz and blues of modern life and culture seeking through poetic fragmentation and broken rhythm of modern living. Adil’s story of life is one of the shipwrecks marked in Longellow’s A Psalm of Life as he can relate and allude to with regard to the Indian Jews and the Parsis. Marathi or Gujarati is not his mother tongue, but has been adopted and adapted to. He still craves for the Iranian connections and locations unknown and unrelated to, the passage of history through which they slipped and came to seeking shelter and an escape from.

Adil Jussawalla’s English is conversational and journalistic, the modern man’s speech, the nuances and rhythm of the modern speech and language. A poet of Bombay, he is a Bombayan; Bombay the metropolitan capital, the mega city is the poetic canvas of Adil Jussawalla, who himself is a Parsi. Adil thinks that Bombay is a divided city and he himself a divided man.

Adil Jussawalla as a poet vexes us and baffles rather than regaling us with his poetry as his is a poetry of fragmentation and disintegration, the distraction of the self and the dislocation of the psyche rather than a combination in harmony and that he has written to scatter and see rather than enjoining in a whole and that he turned to poetry to disintegrate than to integrate. A Parsi, he could not find his place, the root of nativity and the place of location so turned to the disporan persona as for an analysis and delving. His roots not the roots of nativity, but of dislocation and rootlessness. His myths not the myths of India, but of Persia, missed and recaptured. Historically and mythically cut off, he tells of an alienated saga in a different version of statement and poetic truths.

The other thing too is this that he is a city-dweller, a man from Bombay so the urban spaces of the cosmopolitan town are bound to influence his track of writing, as the poet as a man is a part of that society which he inhabits it, lives in.

Most of the modern English poets and poetesses whom we read them today are but the modern diseased fellows as they continue to suffer from the feeling of alienation, homelessness and rootlessness and Adil Jussawalla is no exception to that. We mean the displaced people continue to hold the microphone set and voice through. In this age of job and employment, leaving ones’ own places and homes, nativity and tradition, the people continue to move on from place to place also contains in statements. But as far as Adil is concerned, he is but a Parsi, would have come to India after a shipwreck as he says about the Jews.

A missing person is one who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as his location and fate is not known, this is what the encyclopedia says it, but in the case of Adil Jussawalla he went missing after Land’s End and Missing Person, but resurfaced and returned back to with Trying To say Goodbye and The Right Kind of Dog. Contemporary art and things, objects and situations are the properties of his poetry. The old watch, the old radio, the record player, the gramophone, he has not forgotten them. England hangs heavy over him; the days spent in reading architecture, but side by side the English language twitching him for an expression and he catching the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the language in his poetry. Had poetry been otherwise, he would have converted it into the pieces of art and architecture; had it been, he would have taken us to Persia with his understanding of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism. His wounded psyche and self, none has come to comprehend it, only the passage of time can feel it on the corridors of history, what it is in his mind, what it is in his heart. The word appears as some sort of aberration in him, is an obsession with him and he seems to be searching it, as the search for the lost mother tongue too continues with it at the same time. The father’s Lahore and the mother’s Gujarat too cast an impact of their own seconded by the tales told by the older members of the family. The earlier works show him as a globe-trotter, a no-man on the travels and tours, but the latter trace him landing and stationing at the airport of Bombay and taking a stroll by the sea beaches of it; thinking about Indian karma and dharma. Westernization and Europeanization not, apart from it, the pull of Indianism and the process of Indianization too can be marked in him and it draws him closer to. Language had been his primary love, now the earth behind him seems to be turning with his tuning to literature.

What it is in Adil Jussawalla, it is very difficult to say it as because he is a complex writer of the modern times, not so easily comprehensible and to be laid bare for meaning. Land's End takes him to England and Europe and he imagines of life and times in a private and personal way as a Westerner thinks and imagines, but Missing Person gives some stronghold to him. Again, just like the title he goes missing. Some forget him as a poet; some remember him as for a historical reference. But he resurfaces again for a landmark and comes upon with his Trying to Say Goodbye to be followed by The Right Kind of Dog. A poet of Bombay, he is a Bombay man and his vision dismal and bleak. The house is a motif, a recurrent image of his poetry and he searches for earnestly. A Parsi poet, he suffers from the search for identity no doubt. But his talks of Karna, Abhimanyu, Eklavya give him a sound foothold of own and he returns back to an optimism of own. This is just to embolden his presence and personality with the things like modernity, minority presence, Dalit literature, diaspora dais and Partition literature as all these things continue to nurture his poetic self. In addition to these, alienation, exile, rootlessness, homelessness and the quest for identity take to his canvas. Nostalgia and homesickness corrode the self. The house is a mirage and the historicity of tradition a myth. There as nothing as that to look to in legacy and heritage.

Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay is a poem of return journey back home, reverberating with home, home, sweet home, there is no place like home. The plane dashing down, approaching and flying closer make him lashed with the memories and images of the churches, popes and their benedictions. The papal configure and conjure up first as it engaged his images all through the way, what he saw in Europe, passing and flying over, drifting to Bombay. A saga of the tryst with the churches, crosses, domes and lashing over, taking the centre space continues to hang on to. But the earth is not that what we opine in our way even though we have made it populous.

The Indian diplomat sitting with him engages him otherwise. This is all what happens midair while reaching Bombay.

But the things take a sensitive turn when the plane seems to be touching down the earth. The homeland imagery and feeling and sensitivity start palpitating, beating and he getting nostalgic ad homesick, ever remembered of his home and the signs and signals around. The heart strikes like the tolling bell. The experiences of air travel from foreign to back home form the base of the poem.

Loud benedictions of the silver popes,

A cross to themselves, above

A union of homes as live as a disease.

Still, though the earth be stunk and populous,

We’re told it’s not: our Papa’ll put his nose

Down on cleaner ground. Soon to receive

Its due, the circling heart, encircled, sees

The various ways of dying that are home.

‘Dying is all the country’s living for,’

A doctor says. ‘We’ve lost all hope, all pride.’

I peer below. The poor, invisible,

Show me my place; that, in the air,

With the scavenger birds, I ride.

Economists enclosed in History’s

Chinese boxes, citing Chairman Mao,

Know how a people nourished on decay

Disintegrate or crash in civil war.

Contrarily, the Indian diplomat,

Flying with me, is confident the poor

Will stay just as they are. 

Birth

Pyramids the future with more birth.

Our only desert, space; to leave the green

Burgeoning to black, the human pall.

The free

Couples in their chains around the earth.

I take a second look. We turn,

Grazing the hills and catch a glimpse of sea.

We are now approaching Santa Cruz: all

Arguments are endless now and I

Feel the guts tighten and all my senses shake.

The heart, stirring to trouble in its clenched

Claw, shrivelled inside the casing of a cage

Forever steel and foreign, swoops to take

Freedom for what it is. The slums sweep

Up to our wheels and wings and nothing’s free

But singing while the benedictions pour

Out of a closing sky. And this is home,

Watched by a boy as still as a shut door,

Holding a mass of breadcrumbs like a stone.

              ---- Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay

Adil Jussawalla’s is elite poetry, for the intelligentsia, beyond the comprehension of the common readers as he writes about dislocation and displacement, exile and alienation, diaspora and Dalit literature, homelessness and rootlessness, quest for identity and shelter. A search for home ever continues in him which but the fanatical people cannot. How were they driven out of Persia, how were they out of Iran? How had it been the heyday of Zoroastrianism? Has one come to feel it? Now just the Gujarati or Bombayan connections making up for and he is convalescing in that company, holding parleys with. A Parsi poet of some Parsi historicity and reflection, which but cannot be relegated to the background, he is a modern poet of the contemporary times, one of the urban space and of broken rhythms of life; a modernist or a post-modernist from Bombay. His music is the music of modernity, urbanity and city centres, the jazz turning blues and vice versa, the music of the modern hollow men hollow and shallow from within, the people of the urban space gasping for breath and outing. The modern hollow man is the protagonist of his creating and recreating out of this predicament. Just the tidbits dotted by travels and tours intersperse his verses. Sometimes it means it not what he means to communicate as broken rhymes, broken rhythms continue to carry on the music of his verse. Instead of our unwillingness to take up modern Indian English verse, we get accustomed to such a reading as we cannot discern modernity and its music of living.

Canonization: Donne

Donne “the wittiest man of Jacobean age” is “the most intellectual poet of English literature”. He turns “an intellectual pokers in love knots”, says Coleridge. The canonization is one of the famous poem of Donne, Love for All by Dryden also have an identical theme. The poem explores dramatically the philosophical implication of loss of love. The logical and complex comparisons which are derived from this comparison have become a common place in English. The basic conceit of the poem is that true lovers are saint. The lovers are out of subject, if not in history, at least in poetry. Their love songs will be hymns of a new religion of which they will be saint.

Thus, they will rise to sainthood, i.e... Canonization and other people will worship them as “you to whom love was peace that now is rare”. The poem is spoken as a dialogue between speaker and his friend, who objects the youthful orregies of the lover. The friend is an anti-romantic; such is an essential quality of the science oriented society. The poem opens on a dramatic expression. To “You” the poem is identified, is not known; we led to believe that it is a man, perhaps a friend, who represents the whole world, for whom love is a sinful.

The poem opens with the word in which the poet addresses the world to mind his own business: “For God sake hold you tongue and let me love”. The poet starts heaping metaphor upon metaphor right at the beginning of first stanza. He says to his friend:
                   “Chide my palsy, or my gout, 
                     or my five grey hairs…….”.   
The second stanza points out that the affairs of the world would not be affected by the lovers:         
                   “What merchants ships have my sights drowned  
                   and ayre of tears have overflowed your ground   
                   when did my cold a forward spring remove”.

The third stanza stresses that, his experience of love is to continue, and the vein of irony is to be maintained. He suggests such absurdities to his friend:       
                   “Call her one, me another flye
                   We are tapers to, we can at owne cost die”
such fantastical comparison, is compared to other things. The opening of fourth “If we can not live by it, we can die by it” shows the will of death of the lover. The lovers are ready to die for the world; they are callow but confident. Then, their legend, their love songs will raise them to canonization, and other people will invoke them:         
                   “The greatest ashes, and halfe acre tomb   
                   and our new hymns, make us canoniz’d.”

The theme reaches in a final touch in the final stanza. The lover loses the word but actually they gained the soul. This comparison is hinted in earlier phoenix metaphors, here, it receives a powerful dramatization. The lovers becoming hermits have not lost the world, but they have found it in themselves. Now they become the “pattern of love”. The poem ends with the words:
                   “all they will makes you epitome’dcity,       
                   court, countries, and bags from        
                   a pattern of your love”. 
The tone with which the poem closes is one of the greatest triumph achievements.

In conclusion, in this poem Donne not takes love as mystical but sober and serious. Its seriousness is in the fact that Donne is very fast in his purpose. Here Donne takes love not as non-seriously, neither mystical, not merely indulging, but a cynical and brady of two, rather
                   “a reading of the poem shows that Donne 
                   uses love and religion seriously”,     
remarks Cleanth Brooke. Because of this quality, Compton Rickett calls him “Elizabethan Browning”. One may add to it, in this poem, Donne do not despises the flesh but he accepts physical beauty as soul’s embodiment. So much so that he does not repent for this type of poetry even in the Holy Sonnets.

Leight Hunt on Periodical Essay

I look upon a periodical essayist as a writer who claims a peculiar intimacy with the public. He does not come upon them at once in all the majesty of a quarto or all the gaiety of a beau duodecimo,’ smooth and well dressed: but his acquaintance is likely to be more lasting, because it is more gradual and because you see him in a greater variety of subject and opinion. If you do not like him at first you may give up his conversation; but the author of a book is fixed upon you forever, and if he cannot entertain you beyond the moment, you must even give him sleeping room in your library. But how many pleasant modes are there of getting rid of a periodical essay? It may assist your meditation by lighting your pipe, it may give steadiness to your candle, it may curl the tresses of your daughter or your sister, or lastly, if you are not rich enough to possess an urn or a cloth-holder, it may save you a world of opodeldoc* by wrapping the handle of your tea-kettle. These are advantages.

The title of my essays may perhaps alarm some of my friends with its magnificence, and the repetition of the name Examiner may annoy others with its monotony. But with respect to the later objection, I regard the various departments of this paper as children of the same family, and therefore though of different professions they all have the same surname: A gentleman of the name of Simkins for instance has three sons, one a politician, another a theatrical critic, and the third a philosopher; a person sees these three honest men and points them out to his friend, That is Mr. Simkins the politician, with the black hair; the next to him, a thin man, Mr. Simkins the critic; the other, pale-faced gentleman, is Mr. Simkins the philosopher.’ Just so I have my Political Examiner, my Theatrical Examiner, and my Literary and Philosophical Examiner. As to the epithet literary, it is no very boastful title when every editor of a newspaper claims the palm of authorship; and with respect to the title of philosopher, it means nothing more in its original sense than a Lover of Wisdom, and my readers must confess, that it would be a most unpardonable rudeness in any person to come with his objections between me and my mistress. (I put the lady last for the sake of climax.)

A Philosopher in fact, or in other words a Lover of Wisdom, claims no more merit to himself for his title than is claimed by the lover of any other lady; all his praise consists in having discovered her beauty and good sense. He is, like any other submissive swain, a mere machine in her hands. It is his business to echo and to praise every word she says, to doat upon her charms, and to insist to every body he meets that the world would want its sunshine without her.

The age of periodical philosophy is perhaps gone by, but Wisdom is an ever-lasting beauty; and I have the advantage of all the lessons in philosophic gallantry which my predecessors have left behind them. Perhaps I may avoid some of the inelegancies, though I may be hopeless of attaining the general charm of these celebrated men. I shall always endeavor to recollect the consummate ease and gentility with which Addison approached his divine fair one and the passionate earnestness with which he would gaze upon her in the intervals of the most graceful familiarity; but then I must not forget his occasional incorrectness of language and his want of depth, when he attempted to display the critic. Goldsmith, next to Addison, was the favorite who approached Wisdom with the happiest mixture of seriousness and pleasantry; the instant he began to speak, you were prepared for elegance, solidity; and a most natural manner of expression: it must be confessed indeed, that he was infinitely more correct in his general manner than Addison, but it must also be recollected that the latter spoke first and was more original.

Johnson paid his devoirs like one who claimed rather than entreated notice, for he knew his desert; it becomes me to be more humble, and I hope it will be my good fortune to see Wisdom in her cheerful moments a little oftener than the melancholy Rambler; at the same time I must confess that I have not the slightest hope of viewing her so clearly or of venturing half so far within the sphere of her approach. There was a coldness in the obeisance of Hawkesworth, but there was also a thoughtfulness and a dignity: what he spoke was always acknowledged by the circle, but it seldom reached their feelings. Colman and Thornton did not profess sensibility, they were content with a jauntiness and a pleasantry, that ought to have been their ornament rather than their sole merit.

Mackenzie felt the beauty more than the mind of his goddess; he stood rather bashfully behind, and could never venture into her presence without an introduction by some other admirer; but he was full of sensibility, and Wisdom never smiled upon him with such complacency as when his eyes were filled with tears.

If I can persuade the public to hear me after these celebrated men, I shall think myself extremely fortunate;  if I can amuse them with any originality, I shall think myself deserving; if I procure them any moral benefit, I shall think myself most happy. It will be my endeavor to avoid those subjects which have been already handled in periodical works, or at any rate if I should be tempted to use them, I will exert myself to give them a new air and recommendation. .

If I begin with promises however, my reader will begin with suspicion. I wish to make an acquaintance with   him, and I know that it is not customary on your first introduction to a person to tell him how you mean to enchant him in your future connexion. My new acquaintance and I therefore will sit still a little and reconnoitre each other with true English civility.

Rape of the Lock

Source: http/zainabkhawaja.wordpress.com/2011/4/11/the rape of the-lock/

The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope is one of the most famous examples of a mock-epic poem in the English language. It was first published in 1712, and was later revised to include the “machinery”, the retinue of supernaturals who influence both the actions and the morals of the story. It is Pope’s poetic career that defines the Augustan Age of English literature with neoclassical poetry that was learned and allusive, setting less value on originality that the Romantic poets would in the next century. A main feature of literature at this time, one that affects Pope’s writing, is that it was morally and politically engaged, privileging satire as its most central form.

The poem was inspired by an actual incident that took place between acquaintances of Pope’s. The main character in the poem, Belinda, is in fact based on Arabella Fermor, and the man who cut off a lock of her hair is Lord Petre. John Caryll, to whom the poem is addressed, asked Pope to write a poem, putting the entire event forth in a light-hearted way to end the strife between the two families. Pope’s aim was to encourage his friends to laugh at their own foolishness by writing a humorous commentary on the arrogance and idleness of the 18^th century elite.

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic poem. The epic is a form of poetry usually applied to grand, lofty subjects such as love and war. By applying this form to the trivial argument between Belinda and the Baron, Pope pokes fun at his society and its failure to rise to epic standards. His election to shape his poem in the elaborate style of the classic epic involved observation of certain required traditions: the invocation to the muse, the playing of a game that becomes a symbol of battle, the description of the heroes’ armor, and a descent into the underworld. Using this style essentially makes a mockery of the event, which is said to have actually occurred and inspired Pope’s poem. As a result, Pope emphasizes the ridiculousness of a society that contains members who have so much free time they elevate frivolous events and treat these events with the gravity that should be applied to more serious issues. Values have lost all proportion.

Literary devices are intricately laced throughout the poem. The verse form of this poem is the heroic couplet, one in which two ideas may be easily balanced and counter-weighed. It is perfectly suited to the evaluative, moralizing nature of the poem. The heroic couplet is made of rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines, with sentences distributed across lines and half-lines, so that the judicious aspect of Pope’s ideas is emphasized.

Pope tells us a great deal about his poem during the impact of its first few seconds. The opening of Canto 1 makes clear the mock-heroic style. Here, Pope invokes the Muse, states the dedication to John Caryll, and introduces the conventional epic subjects of love and war. (Tillotson, 1938)

‘This verse to Caryll, Muse! Is due;

This, ev’n Belinda may vouchsafe to view.

Yet already we can see that these subjects are not being treated seriously. We are promised a narrative of towering anger and conflict, ‘dire Offence’ and ‘mighty Contests’, but already, the amorous causes, however mighty the contests they produce, have been dubbed ‘trivial Things’.  In addition to the social context, there is a literary one. Pope’s opening lines are an allusion to Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is here that we establish that this is to be a mocking poem. Copying Milton, Pope surprises us by writing not of the wrath of Achilles, or Virgil’s arms and the man, but simply the cutting off of a girl’s hair. The humor is Pope’s poem is “high-built indoor laughter”. Its mockery is far from simple. The laughter is often simultaneously hitting two objects: the great epic form and life itself, the characters, the well-bred lord, the gentle belle, Sir Plume. And yet, not all will be laughter. There is the title and the fierceness of the verb ‘assault’ to remind the reader that there is some seriousness yet.

In Canto 1, with Belinda’s dream, Pope introduces the “machinery” of the poem. He begins to sketch the character of coquette” in this initial canto. He draws the portrait indirectly, through characteristics of the Sylphs rather than of Belinda herself. The Sylphs become an allegory for the mannered conventions that govern female social behavior. Pope makes it clear that these women are not conducting themselves on the basis of abstract moral principles, but are governed by an elaborate social mechanism – of which the Sylphs cut a fitting caricature. (SparkNotes Editors, 2002)

Pope was a weak human as well as a moralist. In his poem, he flatters Belinda, saying that she must be forgiven for her mistakes. He dubbed the cutting of the lock a ‘trivial Thing,’ but if Belinda has all the typical female foibles, Pope wants us to recognize that it is partly because she has been educated and trained to act this way.

Pope’s portrayal of Belinda at her dressing table introduces mock-heroic motifs that run through the poem. The scene of her toilette is rendered first as a religious sacrament, in which Belinda herself in the priestess and her image in the looking glass is the Goddess she serves, This parody of the religious rites before a battle gives way, then to another kind of mock-epic scene, that of the ritualized arming of the hero. Combs, pins, and cosmetics take the place of weapons as “awful Beauty puts on all its arms”.

In Canto 2, Belinda sets out by boat to Hampton Court Palace. She is accompanied by a party of ladies and gentlemen, but is the most striking member of the group. Her two ringlets are described as love’s labyrinths, designed to entangle men’s hearts. The Baron decides to steal these locks. He builds an altar to pray for success. In true mock-heroic fashion, the gods listened to his prayer but decided to grant only half of it. Ariel remembers that ‘some dire disaster’ threatens Belinda, and assigns her an extensive troop of bodyguards.

In the first canto, the religious imagery surrounding Belinda’s grooming rituals gave way to militaristic conceit. The same happens in this canto. (SparkNotes Editors, 2002) Her curls are a trap to ensnare an enemy. Her petticoat is described as a defensive armament comparable to the Shield of Achilles. Here, the sexual allegory of the poem comes into view. The title of the poem associates the cutting of Belinda’s hair with a more explicit sexual conquest and here Pope cultivates that suggestion. The sexually metaphorical language increases with words like ‘ravish’ and ‘betray’. Also, the breaking of china is an allusion to the loss of virginity.  Belinda’s petticoat is the battlefield that requires the most extensive fortifications. This fact furthers the idea that the rape of the lock stands in for literal rape.

In Canto 3, the boat reaches its destination and Belinda sits down with two men to play a game of cards. They play ombre, somewhat like bridge. And it is described in terms of a heroic battle: the cards are troops. Belinda begins favorably, but soon the Baron is winning. Belinda recovers in the last trick so as to just barely win back the amount she bid. Then they all get ready to drink coffee. The Baron is reminded of his intention to cut Belinda’s lock. Clarissa gives him scissors and on his third attempt he manages to achieve his goal. The Sylphs try to protect her, but Ariel finds that she has ‘an earthly lover lurking at her heart’, and gives up protecting her then. The implication is that she secretly wants to be violated. The deed is done. Belinda throws a fit of anger.

Hampton Court Palace is described as a place where Queen Anne ‘dost sometimes consel take – and sometimes tea’. This is a zeugma, the effect of which is show the royal residence as a place that houses both serious matters of state and frivolous social occasions. Against the gossip and chatter of the young lords and ladies, Pope opens a window onto more serious matters that are occurring meanwhile, like criminal trials & executions. The card game is a parody of the battle scenes of great epic poems. Pope is suggesting that the energy and passion once applied to brave and serious purposes is now expended on such insignificant trials as games and gambling, which often become a mere front for flirtation. Belinda’s distress after her lock has been cut is to some degree an affectation. The melodrama of her screams is complimented by the ironic comparison of the Baron’s feat to the conquest of nations.

In Canto 4, after the loss of Belinda’s lock, an earthly gnome named Umbriel flies down to the “Cave of Spleen”. He passes through Belinda’s room, where she’s attended by Ill-Nature and Affectation, her two handmaidens. Umbriel addresses the ‘Goddess of Spleen’ and returns with a bag of ‘sighs, sobs and passions’, and a vial of sorrow, tears and grief, which he unleashes on Belinda, fueling her anger and depression. Her friend Thalestris urges Belinda to avenge herself, insisting that her honor has been insulted. Thalestris urges her husband, Sir Plume, to demand that the Baron return the lock. Sir Plume’s speech is silly and ineffectual, highlighting how far from courtly behavior this generation of gentlemen has fallen. His speech has no logical, moral or oratorical power.

Thalestris’s insistence that Belinda has suffered the worst kind of offense shows us that the real question is a superficial one – public reputation – rather than the moral imperative to chastity. At the end of the canto, Belinda says:

‘Oh, hadst thou, cruel! Been content to seize

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!’

This is suggestive of pubic hair, and Pope is pointing out the degree to which outward appearance is valued over all else.

The Baron ignores the ladies’ appeals, and Clarissa delivers a long speech, stating the moral of the poem. She questions why society places so much emphasis on a woman’s beauty, but almost none on ‘good sense’ and ‘good humour’. The moral of the poem is seriously meant. Critics of that time considered the old poets had planted a firm moral in their epics and this element Pope imitated without mockery. He allotted Clarissa a long speech, setting it out so clearly that no one could have any excuse for missing it.

‘And trust me, Dear! Good Humour can prevail,

When Airs, Flights, and Screams, and Scolding fail…

She is ignored by Belinda and Thalestris, and an all-out attack is launched on the Baron. Umbriel congratulates himself on causing this discord. The description of the battle has a markedly erotic quality, as all the characters wallow in their mock-agonies. Belinda and the Baron meet in combat and she emerges victorious by peppering him with snuff and drawing her bodkin. Pope tells us that the Baron is not frightened because he “sought no more than on his foe to die”, meaning his goal all along was sexual consummation. The ringlet has been lost in the chaos. Pope avers that it has risen to heaven to become a star, so that it may be admired for all eternity. In this way, it will attract more envy that it ever could on earth.

Canto 5’s battle scene is an allusion to heroic military actions. The stoic Baron is compared to Aeneas ‘the Trojan’ and Roman gods are invoked by name. The bodkin here represents a decorative hair pin, but there is a suggestion of the weapon of the ancient days as Belinda holds it over the Baron. The poem ends in a decidedly mock-heroic way. The ending is designed to compliment Arabella Fermor (Belinda), and also to praise the poet as the instrument of her immortality. We find that no real moral development has taken place. Belinda is asked to come to terms with her loss through a kind of bribe, or distraction that reinforces her basically frivolous outlook.

The fundamental theme of The Rape of the Lock is the ruckus that high society makes over insignificant matters, such as breaches of decorum. Other themes that Pope develops in the poem include human vanity and the importance of being able to laugh at life’s little reversals. The latter motif is a kind of “moral to the story.” (Cummings, 2011) Epic conventions that Pope parodies include: invocation of the muse, division of the poem into cantos, descriptions of soldiers preparing for battle and heroic deeds, account of a great sea voyage, participation of deities or spirits in the action, and presentation of scenes in the underworld.

The main figure of speech in The Rape of the Lock is hyperbole. Pope uses it throughout the poem to exaggerate the ordinary and the commonplace, making them extraordinary and spectacular. In so doing, paradoxically, he makes them seem as they really are, small and petty. (Cummings, 2011) One example is:

‘Sol through white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray,

And ope’d those Eyes that must eclipse the Day.’

Other literary devices are also used, such as personification in the phrase ‘Love in these Labyrinths his Slaves detains’ and anaphora in the line ‘He saw, he wish’d, and to the Prize aspir’d’ and alliteration in several heroic couplets, such as:

‘Where Wigs with Wigs, with Sword-knots Sword-knots strive,

Beaux banish Beaux, and Coaches Coaches drive.’

Pope’s message is very effectively put across. Not only does he show how the conflict between the two parties is trivial, but through this poem he also addresses wider societal concerns. His satire is directed to upper-class society as a whole. Mocking Belinda’s vanity and pretensions, her compares her to the sun. His images of silver and gold suggest that we need to consider the real value underlying glittery and outwardly attractive surfaces.

I found this poem very well written and enjoyable. Pope’s careful diction and use of the heroic couplet not only enhances the satire of the poem, but paints a striking picture of how Pope views the society that he lives in. Throughout the poem, it seems that he is half-admonishing, half-poking fun at Belinda and the Baron. In a good-natured way, he’s trying to point out flaws.

Frankenstein: Marry Shelley

Texas astronomers have used the light of the moon to highlight the hour of creation for Victor Frankenstein and his notorious monster – and defend the memory of their teenage creator, Mary Shelley.

The inspiration came in a waking dream between 2am and 3am on the morning of 16 June, 1816, during a stormy summer on Lake Geneva, they explain in the November issue of Sky and Telescope.

In the preface to the third edition of Frankenstein Shelley described a villa party: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, herself and Byron's physician Polidori, and the famous challenge by Byron that each of them should begin a ghost story. She also described her repeated inability to come up with an idea until a moment of inspiration during a sleepless night in her dark room, behind closed shutters "with the moonlight struggling to get through".

And then, she continued: "I saw with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life …"

The two poets soon lost interest. Polidori picked up an idea of Byron's and much later launched another genre with a Gothic thriller called The Vampyre. He also kept a diary of his days with Byron and some enigmatic entries have prompted scholars and biographers to suggest that to enhance sales Mary Shelley might have composed yet another fictionabout the chronology of literary creation. Did Byron make his famous challenge on 16 June? Was Mary Shelley, only 18 at the time, writing the next day?

Or did she spend several days agonising and think of her tale on 22 June?

"Our calculations show that can't be right, because there wouldn't be any moonlight," says Donald Olson, from Texas State University in San Marcos. Just as astronomers can predict sunrise, lunar cycles and tides decades ahead, they can say when they happened centuries in the past. Prof Olson has already used astronomical tables and geographic reference points to fix the time, date and location of paintings by Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh; to propose revised timings for the Battle of Marathon in 490BC and Caesar's invasion of Britain in 55BC; and even to confirm a freak Breton tide mentioned in Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale.

In August 2010, Professor Olson, two colleagues and two students went to Lake Geneva to discover when moonlight would have hit the windows, and penetrated the shutters, of Mary Shelley's bedroom. The answer required a visit to the villa, still in private ownership, a study of the terrain, and perusal of weather records.

Shelley reports that she stayed up beyond the "witching hour" of midnight. By 22 June, the moon would then have been a waning crescent, masked by a hillside. But a bright, gibbous moon would have cleared the hillside to shine into Mary Shelley's bedroom window just before 2am on 16 June.

So Shelley's version of events is supported by evidence. Byron probably made his famous ghost story challenge somewhere between 10 and 13 June, 1816. On 15 June, according to both Polidori and Mary Shelley, the party talked about the "principle" of life. The monster and the tormented scientist were dreamed up in the small hours of that night.

"Mary Shelley wrote about moonlight shining through her window, and for 15 years I wondered if we could recreate that night," says Prof Olson. "We did recreate it. We see no reason to doubt her account."

BEDE (673-735)

The Venerable Bede, as he is generally called, our first great scholar and "the father of our English learning," wrote almost exclusively in Latin, his last work, the translation of the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon, having been unfortunately lost. Much to our regret, therefore, his books and the story of his gentle, heroic life must be excluded from this history of our literature. His works, over forty in number, covered the whole field of human knowledge in his day, and were so admirably written that they were widely copied as text-books, or rather manuscripts, in nearly all the monastery schools of Europe.

The work most important to us is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. It is a fascinating history to read even now, with its curious combination of accurate scholarship and immense credulity. In all strictly historical matters Bede is a model. Every known authority on the subject, from Pliny to Gildas, was carefully considered; every learned pilgrim to Rome was commissioned by Bede to ransack the archives and to make copies of papal decrees and royal letters; and to these were added the testimony of abbots who could speak from personal knowledge of events or repeat the traditions of their several monasteries.

Side by side with this historical exactness are marvelous stories of saints and missionaries. It was an age of credulity, and miracles were in men's minds continually. The men of whom he wrote lived lives more wonderful than any romance, and their courage and gentleness made a tremendous impression on the rough, warlike people to whom they came with open hands and hearts. It is the natural way of all primitive peoples to magnify the works of their heroes, and so deeds of heroism and kindness, which were part of the daily life of the Irish missionaries, were soon transformed into the miracles of the saints. Bede believed these things, as all other men did, and records them with charming simplicity, just as he received them from bishop or abbot. Notwithstanding its errors, we owe to this work nearly all our knowledge of the eight centuries of our history following the landing of Caesar in Britain.

Other Links related to the age:

1. Beowulf: WJ LONG  and  Beowulf: essay
2. The Venerable Bade
3. Alfred
4. Cynewulf
5. Court of King Arthur
6. Chronology of Anglo Saxon Age
7. Anglo Saxon Age

ALFRED (848-901)

"Every craft and every power soon grows

old and is passed over and forgotten, if it

be without wisdom.... This is now to be

said, that whilst I live I wish to live nobly,

and after life to leave to the men who come

after me a memory of good works."

So wrote the great Alfred, looking back over his heroic life. That he lived nobly none can doubt who reads the history of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon kings; and his good works include, among others, the education of half a country, the salvage of a noble native literature, and the creation of the first English prose.

LIFE AND TIMES OF ALFRED

For the history of Alfred's times, and details of the terrific struggle with the Northmen, the reader must be referred to the histories. The struggle ended with the Treaty of Wedmore, in 878, with the establishment of Alfred not only as king of Wessex, but as overlord of the whole northern country. Then the hero laid down his sword, and set himself as a little child to learn to read and write Latin, so that he might lead his people in peace as he had led them in war. It is then that Alfred began to be the heroic figure in literature that he had formerly been in the wars against the Northmen.

With the same patience and heroism that had marked the long struggle for freedom, Alfred set himself to the task of educating his people. First he gave them laws, beginning with the Ten Commandments and ending with the Golden Rule, and then established courts where laws could be faithfully administered. Safe from the Danes by land, he created a navy, almost the first of the English fleets, to drive them from the coast. Then, with peace and justice established within his borders, he sent to Europe for scholars and teachers, and set them over schools that he established. Hitherto all education had been in Latin; now he set himself the task, first, of teaching every free-born Englishman to read and write his own language, and second, of translating into English the best books for their instruction. Every poor scholar was honored at his court and was speedily set to work at teaching or translating; every wanderer bringing a book or a leaf of manuscript from the pillaged monasteries of Northumbria was sure of his reward. In this way the few fragments of native Northumbrian literature, which we have been studying, were saved to the world. Alfred and his scholars treasured the rare fragments and copied them in the West-Saxon dialect. With the exception of Caedmon's Hymn, we have hardly a single leaf from the great literature of Northumbria in the dialect in which it was first written.

WORKS OF ALFRED

Aside from his educational work, Alfred is known chiefly as a translator. After fighting his country's battles, and at a time when most men were content with military honor, he began to learn Latin, that he might translate the works that would be most helpful to his people. His important translations are four in number: Orosius's Universal History and Geography, the leading work in general history for several centuries; Bede's History, the first great historical work written on English soil; Pope Gregory's Shepherds' Book, intended especially for the clergy; and Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy, the favorite philosophical work of the Middle Ages.

More important than any translation is the English or Saxon Chronicle. This was probably at first a dry record, especially of important births and deaths in the West-Saxon kingdom. Alfred enlarged this scant record, beginning the story with Caesar's conquest. When it touches his own reign the dry chronicle becomes an interesting and connected story, the oldest history belonging to any modern nation in its own language. The record of Alfred's reign, probably by himself, is a splendid bit of writing and shows clearly his claim to a place in literature as well as in history. The Chronicle was continued after Alfred's death, and is the best monument of early English prose that is left to us. Here and there stirring songs are included in the narrative, like "The Battle of Brunanburh" and "The Battle of Maldon." The last, entered 991, seventy-five years before the Norman Conquest, is the swan song of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The Chronicle was continued for a century after the Norman Conquest, and is extremely valuable not only as a record of events but as a literary monument showing the development of English language.

Other Links related to the age:

1. Beowulf: WJ LONG  and  Beowulf: essay
2. The Venerable Bade
3. Alfred
4. Cynewulf
5. Court of King Arthur
6. Chronology of Anglo Saxon Age
7. Anglo Saxon Age