Dialogue through Historical Allusions: James Elroy Flecker’s System of Poetic Communication in “War Song of the Saracens”

M. Saeed, Ismael; A. Dabbagh, Lanja

	Dialogue through Historical Allusions: James Elroy Flecker’s System of Poetic Communication in “War Song of the Saracens”
Al-Mustansiriya Journal of Arts
Article 1, Volume 0, Issue 60, 2017, Pages 1-19
Authors
Ismael M. Saeed; Lanja A. Dabbagh
Abstract
This paper analyzes James Elroy Flecker’s “War Song of the Saracens”, a poem with an ostensible wealth of historical allusions, as its historical contents happen to communicate additional material to what is visibly present in the text. The more we dig into the significance of the historical contents, the further we realize that Flecker utilizes the said allusions to help him create his patterns of lexical clusters ,as well as verbal, linguistic, and communication choices that remain largely and distinctively his trademark .The selected poem for this analysis should mean much to the scholars from our part of the world, because it represents an example of how a well-informed, scholarly poet could handle the sophisticated turns of events in an unbiased manner. It also shows how Flecker was able to deal deftly and skillfully with issues that were, and continue to be, culture-specific. The outcome is an aesthetically distinguished poem that has its particular coding system in conducting its discourse. The allusions are part of the coded process. The poet’s speaking voice, reincarnating the spirit of bygone heroes, as will be revealed in the analysis, uses the language of history to have his dialogue with the recipients. The eventful and central utterance of the poem, found in line Nine” and by God we will go there again”, is proven to be the gist of the entire communication delivered via the thinly disguised connotations, aided by the sincerity of the tone.

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