You might also like

More about The Early Poetry of Robert Graves

• Book details
• Synopsis
• Trending among others

You get 65 loyalty points

Book synopsis

Like many men of his generation, poet Robert Graves was indelibly marked by his experience of trench warfare in World War I. The horrific battles in which he fought and his guilt over surviving when so many perished left Graves shell-shocked and disoriented, desperately seeking a way to bridge the rupture between his conventional upbringing and the uncertainties of post-war British society. In this study of Graves's early poetry, Frank Kersnowski explores how his war neurosis opened a door into the unconscious for Graves and led him to reject the essential components of the Western idea of reality--reason and predictability. In particular, Kersnowski traces the emergence in Graves's early poems of a figure he later called "The White Goddess," a being at once terrifying and glorious, who sustains life and inspires poetry. Drawing on interviews with Graves's family, as well as unpublished correspondence and drafts of poems, Kersnowski argues that Graves actually experienced the White Goddess as a real being and that his life as a poet was driven by the purpose of celebrating and explaining this deity and her matriarchy.

Book details

Book category Books in English Literature & literary studies Literature: history & criticism Literary studies: poetry & poets

• Full title: The Early Poetry of Robert Graves
• Subtitle: The Goddess Beckons
• Author: Frank L. Kernowski
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192
• EAN: 9780292723658
• ISBN: 0292723652
• ID: 04873118
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Weight: 567 g
• Dimensions: 229 × 152 × 11 mm
• Date of publishing: 01. June 2002

Trending among others

---

---

---