Published by: irobot (Karma: 8.63) on 11 September 2010 | Views: 3681
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The Chaos represents a virtuoso feat of composition, a mammoth catalogue of about 800 of the most notorious irregularities of traditional English orthography, skilfully versified (if with a few awkward lines) into couplets with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. The selection of examples now appears somewhat dated, as do a few of their pronunciations, indeed a few words may even be unknown to today's readers (how many will know what a 'studding-sail' is, or that its nautical pronunciation is 'stunsail'?), and not every rhyme will immediately 'click' ('grits' for 'groats'?); but the overwhelming bulk of the poem represents as valid an indictment of the chaos of English spelling as it ever did.
