The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth

by Robert Graves, Grevel Lindop (Editor)

Overview

The definitive edition of one of the more extraordinary and influential books of our time

This labyrinthine and extraordinary book, first published more than sixty years ago, was the outcome of Robert Graves's vast reading and curious research into strange territories of folklore, mythology, religion, and magic. Erudite and impassioned, it is a scholar-poet's quest for the meaning of European myths, a polemic about the relations between man and woman, and also an intensely personal document in which Graves explores the sources of his own inspiration and, as he believed, all true poetry.
Incorporating all of Graves's final revisions, his replies to two of the original reviewers, and an essay describing the months of illumination in which The White Goddess was written, this is the definitive edition of one of the most influential books of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374289331
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	10/08/2013
Series:	FSG Classics
Edition description:	Second Edition, A New Edition
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	379,304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Robert Graves (1895–1985) was a poet, novelist, and critic. His first volume of poems, Over the Brazier (1916), reflected his experiences in the trenches during World War I and was followed by many works of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. He is perhaps best known for his novel I, Claudius (1934), which won the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Grevel Lindop's books include Travels on the Dance Floor: One Man's Journey to the Heart of Salsa, The English Opium Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, and several volumes of poems. He was born in Liverpool and now lives in Manchester, where he was formerly a professor of Romantic and

Early Victorian Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Editorial Introduction vii

The White Goddess 1

'In Dedication' 3

Foreword 5

i Poets and Gleemen 13

ii The Battle of the Trees 23

iii Dog, Roebuck and Lapwing 44

iv The White Goddess 56

v Gwion's Riddle 70

vi A Visit to Spiral Castle 93

vii Gwion's Riddle Solved 108

viii Hercules on the Lotus 118

ix Gwion's Heresy 135

x The Tree Alphabet [1] 160

xi The Tree Alphabet [2] 184

xii The Song of Amergin 200

xiii Palamedes and the Cranes 217

xiv The Roebuck in the Thicket 238

xv The Seven Pillars 251

xvi The Holy Unspeakable Name of God 264

xvii The Lion with the Steady Hand 293

xviii The Bull-footed God 305

xix The Number of the Beast 333

xx A Conversation at Paphos - 43 AD 340

xxi The Waters of Styx 355

xxii The Triple. Muse 374

xxiii Fabulous Beasts 400

xxiv The Single Poetic Theme 413

xxv War in Heaven 433

xxvi Return of the Goddess 465

xxvii Postscript 1960 479

Appendix A Two Letters to the Press 485

Appendix B The White Goddess: A Talk 489

Index 505