New Perspectives On Robert Graves

"The book is organized around five distinct themes that include studies on Graves's own literary criticism, offer new insights into his poetry, produce commentary on his often overlooked fictional output, make some reflections on the origins and importance of his White Goddess, and examine some literary crosscurrents that have pollinated Graves's work."--BOOK JACKET.

'The origin for this collection of essays was three research seminars held under a single title, 'Classics and Robert Graves: a relationship in literature, translation and adaptation' (acknowledgements).

A Study Guide for Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Nonfiction Classics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Nonfiction Classics for Students for all of your research needs.

Edward Venn-Thomas lives in the twentieth century but has been mysteriously transported to the future, and the apparently idyllic society of New Create, where there is no hunger, no war and no dissatisfaction. However Venn-Thomas is starting to find life among the New Cretans rather dull. He comes to realize that their perfect existence, inspired by the poets and magicians of their strange occultic religion, lacks one fundamental thing - evil. So Venn-Thomas sees it as nothing less than his duty to introduce them to the darker side of life. First published in 1949 and also known as Watch the North Wind Rise, Graves's novel is a thrilling blend of utopian fantasy, science fiction and mythology.

The writer and poet Robert Graves suppressed virtually all of the poems he had published during and just after the First World War. Until his son, William Graves, reprinted almost all the Poems About War in 1988, Graves's status as a 'war poet' seems to have depended mainly on his prose memoir (and bestseller), Good-bye to All That. None of the previous biographies written on Graves, however excellent, attempt to deal with this paradox in any depth. Robert Graves the war poet and the suppressed poems themselves have been largely neglected – until now. Jean Moorcroft Wilson, celebrated biographer of poets Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg and Edward Thomas, relates Graves's fascinating life during this period, his experiences in the war, his being left for dead at the Battle of the Somme, his leap from a third-storey window after his lover Laura Riding's even more dramatic jump from the fourth storey, his move to Spain and his final 'goodbye' to 'all that'. In this deeply-researched new book, containing startling material never before brought to light, Dr Moorcroft Wilson traces not only Graves's compelling life, but also the development of his poetry during the First World War, his thinking about the conflict and his shifting attitude towards it. Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That casts new light on the life, prose and poetry of Graves, without which the story of Great War poetry is incomplete.

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.

The poet Robert Graves' use of material from classical sources has been contentious to scholars for many years, with a number of classicists baulking at his interpretation of myth and his novelization of history, and questioning its academic value. This collection of essays provides the latest scholarship on Graves' historical fiction (for example in I, Claudius and Count Belisarius) and his use of mythical figures in his poetry, as well as an examination of his controversial retelling of the Greek Myths. The essays explore Graves' unique perspective and expand our understanding of his works within their original context, while at the same time considering their relevance in how we comprehend the ancient world.

Includes "List of books indexed" (published also separately).