The White Goddess (Robert Graves Programme) [Hardcover]

Robert Graves (Author), Grevel Lindop (Author)

Book Description

Series: Robert Graves Programme | Publication Date: February 1, 1999

Graves's text has been fully corrected and revised in this volume as part of the "Robert Graves Programme". The book describes the dynamic of Graves's creative imagination. Grevel Lindop restores to the text its proper order and adds introductory material, as well as notes. This edition should lead to a re-evaluation of Graves's entire oeuvre.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Graves, the late British poet and novelist, was also known for his studies of the mythological and psychological sources of poetry. With The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Graves was able to combine many of his passions into one work. While the book is so poetically written that many of the passages amount to prose poems, it is also frequently plot driven enough to feel like a novel, and it is rich with scholarly insight into the deep wells of poetry. Especially fascinating is the chapter in which Graves explores the ancient and ongoing practice of poets' invoking the muse. Graves details the practice in both the Eastern and Western literary traditions, and shows specific similarities and differences among Greek, British, and Irish tales and myths about the muse. Graves has much to offer students of history and myth, but poetry lovers will also be fascinated with The White Goddess. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Robert Graves (1895-1985), born in London, was one of the most talented, colorful, and prolific men of letters in the twentieth century. He is best known for his historical novels, I, Claudius and Claudius the God. He spent much of his life on the island of Majorca.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd. (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857542487
• ISBN-13: 978-1857542486
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,314,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Graves' Best! A Classic, April 7, 2002

By 

richard hunn (Kyoto, Kansai Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White Goddess (Robert Graves Programme) (Hardcover)

Seeing this reprint in H/b - was a great pleasure. Grevel Lindop has done us all a favour - getting this organised. Always a controversial book, it's a great read - the sort of thing you can open and dip into for years - and still find something fresh iand stimulating. Even if deemed tendentious, at times, it is always a catalyst. Graves' poured great imagination and encyclopaediac stretches of information into this book - essentially his definition of what truly makes a poet - a poet, being a moon struck follower of the white goddess. While I personally subscribe to the view that there may be several different poetic functions - there is something compelling about Graves' basic argument - that poetry is a kind of service to the Goddess, that poetry is something 'magical' - poesis a kind of loss of self, even a kind of 'crucifixion' on the cross of time and space, altho' Graves' would probably have deemed that too Christian sounding. Still, he does suggest that an engagement with poetry - with the Goddess, involves a kind of 'dismemberment' - much like Nietzsche's feeling for the 'Dionsyian' experience - and, like Nietzsche, rather scornful of what 'Apollonians' get up to - in the name of poetry (or anything else). Graves elaborates this theme - with a kind of 'stream of consciousness' detour through several different cultural milieus - chiefly, focusing on the 'Celtic' tradition - and its Graeco-Roman equivalents, always returning to his starting point - the motif of the mother-son/lover-goddess object relationship. In the concluding chapters of the book, Graves concedes that this may become a kind of diffused presence, the 'great mother' in the cosmic sense, thus manifest in the entire creation. Graves' work had its problems, not least the notion that he could present his magnum opus - really a 'visionary' work - as a piece of serious scholarship. As such, the W.G. did not receive recognition from the scholarly fraternity. However, it did strike a chord with the artistic community, the avant garde, virtually achieving 'cult status' for a while - in the 60's. My only complaint about the new preface or introduction - by Grevel Lindop, is a certain ambivalence about who Graves' main audience was - when it mattered most? Graves' 'hippy' readership attracted rather pejorative comments in this respect, as if to suggest that Graves found his niche with the 'orthodox' - which was certainly not the case. Indeed, the same editorial comments go on to link Graves' name (and the W.G.) with 'magic mushrooms,' Hoffmann's discovery of LSD - and the counter-culture which gave the W.G. its greatest audience. That Graves eventually took the Chair in Poetry - at Oxford, was a rather belated tribute. As an editorial consideration, it would have been nice to see a little more attention devoted to the fact that Graves' later association with Idries Shah and the Eastern tradition led to a complete volte -face on Graves' part, vis-a-vis the negative comments accorded to it in the W.G. Still, these are niggles. It's great to see a new H/c edition of the W.G. Given the price, it would have been nice to see proper 'boards and bands' holding the book together. The type of binding used is a cheaper, less substantial h/c format. I say this, because many people keep reading the W.G. - for years, and it deserved decent bindings.A glorious, inspiring chaos!