The first part of this thesis deals with alkylation reactions of endocyclic and exocyclic dienolates. In the case of endocyclic dienolates 107 and 158, specific(...) -alkylation was observed. However, exocyclic dienolates 108 and 160 gave exclusively(...) -alkylation products with reactive electrophiles while the(...) -alkylation products were obtained when aldehydes were employed as electrophiles. It was also noticed that no isomerisation of endocyclic dienolate 107 and exocyclic dienolate 108 occurred in solution at various temperatures. The second part of the thesis describes two synthetic routes to methylenomycin A methyl ester 272 and deepoxy-4,5-didehydromethylenomycin a methyl ester 271 employing anthracene adducts 118 and 266 as starting materials. The last part describes a convenient general synthesis of anthracene adducts A,B and C and subjected to retro Diels-Alder reaction to furnish the correspornding cyclopentanones and cyclopentenones F,E and D either via flash vacuurm pyrolysis or room tempeature silica gel catalysed decomposition.