The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth

Robert Graves

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966 - Literary Criticism - 511 pages

The White Goddess is perhaps the finest of Robert Graves's works on the psychological and mythological sources of poetry. In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deities—the White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Death—who was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysterious power of "pure poetry" and its peculiar and mythic language.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - DinadansFriend - LibraryThing

A curious extended attempt to discern a unifying body of knowledge and attitude between three poetic universes. He uses the Celtic and Greek canons for his reference corpus. There are many interesting ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - P_S_Patrick - LibraryThing

Graves presents us here with his thesis on the meaning of the mythology contained within ancient Welsh literature, including the Book of Taliesin and the Mabinogion, and most importantly the poem of ...

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 andClaudius the God. He spent much of his life on the island of Majorca.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth
• Author: Robert Graves
• Edition: reprint, revised
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966
• ISBN: 0374504938, 9780374504939
• Length: 511 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / Poetry; Social Science / Folklore & Mythology