The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay upon the nature of poetic myth-making by author and poet
Robert GravesGraves considered himself a poet first and foremost. His poems, together with his translations and innovative interpretations of the Greek Myths, his memoir of the First World war, Good-bye to All That, and his historical study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of...
. First published in 1948, based on earlier articles published in
WalesWales was an English-language literary journal, published from 1937 to 1960. The magazine contained fiction, poetry, reviews and articles pertaining to Wales....
, corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961.
The White Goddess represents an approach to the study of
mythologyMythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...
from a decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective. Graves proposes the existence of a
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
an
deityA deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
, the "White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death," inspired and represented by the phases of the moon, who lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European mythologies.
Graves argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with the ancient cult-ritual of his proposed White Goddess and of her son. His conclusions come from his own conjectures about how early religions developed, as there is no historical evidence that the "White Goddess" as he describes her ever figured in any actual belief system.
History
Graves first wrote the book under the title of
The Roebuck in the Thicket in a three-week period during January 1944, only a month after finishing
The Golden Fleece. He then left the book, to focus on
King Jesus, a historical novel about the life of
JesusJesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...
. Returning to
The Roebuck in the Thicket, he renamed it
The Three-Fold Muse, before finishing it and retitling it as
The White Goddess. In January 1946 he sent it to the publishers, and in May 1948 it was published in the UK, and in June 1948 in the US, as
The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth.
Poetry and myth
Graves described
The White Goddess as "a historical grammar of the language of
poeticPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
mythMythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...
." The book draws from the mythology and poetry of
WalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It is also an elective region of the European Union...
and
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
especially, as well as that of most of
Western EuropeWestern Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe...
and the ancient
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. Relying on arguments from
etymologyEtymology is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages, and texts about the languages, to gather knowledge about how words were used at earlier stages, and...
and the use of forensic techniques to uncover what he calls 'iconotropic' redaction of original myths, Graves argues not only for the worship of a single goddess under many names, but also that the names of the
OghamOgham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to represent the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic ancestor of Welsh...
letters in the alphabet used in parts of Gaelic Ireland and Britain contained a calendar that contained the key to an ancient
liturgyA liturgy is the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions. The word may refer to an elaborate formal ritual such as the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy and Catholic Mass, or a daily activity such as the Muslim salat and Jewish services...
involving the
human sacrificeHuman sacrifice is the act of killing human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history...
of a
sacred kingFor the office under ancient Rome, see Rex Sacrorum. In many historical societies, the office of kingship carries a sacral meaning, that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and of judge.- History :...
(see "early Irish astrology"); and, further, that these letter names concealed lines of
Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
hexameterHexameter is a literary and poetic form, a line consisting of six metrical feet, as in the Iliad. It was the standard epic metre in Greek and became standard for Latin too. It was also used in other types of composition -- in Horace's satires, for instance, and Ovid's Metamorphoses...
describing the goddess. In response to critics, Graves has accused literary scholars of being psychologically incapable of interpreting myth or too concerned with maintaining their perquisites to go against the majority view. (See Frazer quote below.)
The Golden BoughThe Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer . It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes...
(1922, but begun in 1890), an early anthropological study by Sir James George Frazer, is the starting point for much of Graves's argument, and Graves thought in part that his book made explicit what Frazer only hinted at. Graves wrote:
Sir James Frazer was able to keep his beautiful rooms at Trinity CollegeTrinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 160 Fellows ....
, CambridgeThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
, until his death by carefully and methodically sailing all around his dangerous subject, as if charting the coastline of a forbidden island without actually committing himself to a declaration that it existed. What he was saying-not-saying was that ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
legendA legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
, dogmaDogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from. The term derives from Greek "that which seems to one, opinion or belief" and that from , "to think, to suppose, to imagine"...
and ritualA ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...
are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarousBarbarian is a term for an uncivilized person, often used pejoratively, either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
beliefs, and that almost the only original element in Christianity is the personality of JesusJesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...
.
Graves's
The White Goddess deals with
goddess worshipGoddess worship may be*the cult of any goddess in polytheistic religions*worship of a Great Goddess on a henotheistic or monotheistic or duotheistic basis**Hindu Shaktism**the neopagan Goddess movement**Wicca**Dianic Wicca...
as the prototypical
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
, analyzing it largely from literary evidence, in myth and poetry.
Graves admitted he was not a medieval historian, but a poet, and thus based his work on the premise that the
language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honor of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry...
Graves concluded, in the second and expanded edition, that the male-dominant monotheistic god of
JudaismJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
and its successors were the cause of the White Goddess's downfall, and thus the source of much of the modern world's woe. He also suggested that women cannot function as
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s and lack the capacity for true poetic creation, because woman's role in poetry remains exclusively to serve as a
museThe Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature are the goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
for a male poet who worships her as a goddess. He did, however, acknowledge
SapphoSappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
as a possible exception.
Graves openly considered poetic inspiration, or "Analepsis" as he termed it, a valid historical methodology.
Visual iconography was also important to Graves's conception. Graves created a methodology for reading images he called "iconotropy". To practice this methodology one is required to reduce "speech into its original images and rhythms" and then to combine these "on several simultaneous levels of thought". By applying this methodology Graves decoded a woodcut of
The Judgement of Paris as depicting a singular Triple Goddess rather than the traditional
HeraIn the Olympian pantheon of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage. In Roman mythology, Juno was the equivalent mythical character. The cow, and later, the peacock were sacred to her...
,
AthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, peace, warfare, strategy, handicrafts and reason, shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour...
and
AphroditeAphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty and raw sexuality. According to Greek poet Hesiod, she was born when Cronus cut off Ouranos's genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the aphros arose Aphrodite.Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace...
of the narrative the image illustrates.
Criticism
The White Goddess has been seen as a poetic work where Graves gives his notion of man's subjection to women in love an "anthropological grandeur" and further mythologises all women in general (and several of Graves's lovers in specific) into a three-faced moon goddess model. However, Graves's intention was that the work should be read as an authentic work of history that rather than a personal poetic vision.
Graves's value as a poet aside, flaws in his scholarship such as poor
philologyPhilology considers both form and meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies.Classical philology is the philology of the Greek, Latin and Sanskrit languages...
, misdating texts (for example, the
Hanes Taliesin from the 16th-18th centuries which he believed a more ancient document), and use of out-dated archeology have been criticised. Some scholars, particularly archeologists, historians and folklorists have not received the work favourably. Graves was disappointed that his work was "loudly ignored" by many Celtic scholars; however, it was accepted as history by many non-scholarly readers and, according to
Ronald HuttonRonald Hutton is a professor of History at the University of Bristol, author, and occasional commentator on British television and radio. His specialties are the 17th century and the history of paganism in the British Isles. In July 2009 he was appointed a Commissioner of English Heritage.-Early...
,
The White Goddess remains a major source of confusion about the ancient Celts and influences many un-scholarly views of Celtic paganism. Hilda Ellis Davidson criticized Graves as having "misled many innocent readers with his eloquent but deceptive statements about a nebulous goddess in early Celtic literature", and stated that he was "no authority" on the subject matter he presented. While Graves made the association between Goddesses and the moon appear "natural," it was not so to the Celts or some other ancient peoples. Some Neopagans have been bemused and upset by the scholarly criticism that
The White Goddess has received in recent years, while others have appreciated its poetic insight but never accepted it as a work of historical veracity.
Michael W. Pharand, though quoting earlier criticisms, rebutted, "Graves's theories and conclusions, outlandish as they seemed to his contemporaries (or may appear to us), were the result of careful observation."
Editions
- 1948 - The White Goddess : a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (London: Faber & Faber) [Corr. 2nd ed. also issued by Faber in 1948] [US ed.= New York, Creative Age Press, 1948]
- 1952 - The White Goddess : a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Amended & enl. ed.[ie 3rd ed.] (London: Faber & Faber) [US ed.= New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1958]
- 1961 - The White Goddess : a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Amended & enl. ed.[ie 4th ed.] (London: Faber & Faber) [US ed.= New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966]
- 1997 - The White Goddess : a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth; edited by Grevel Lindop
-Life:Lindop was born in Liverpool and studied at Wadham College, Oxford, where he read English. After two years of postgraduate research at Wadham and Wolfson Colleges, Oxford, he moved to Chorlton cum Hardy, Manchester, where he still lives with his wife, Amanda...
(Manchester: Carcanet) ISBN 1857542487
Critical studies
- Bennett, Joseph, [review of Robert Graves' The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth], Hudson Review, vol.2 (1949), 133-138
- Davis, Robert A., 'The Origin, Evolution, and Function of the Myth of the White Goddess in the Writings of Robert Graves' (unpublished PhD, University of Stirling, 1987) [ British Library copy: BLDSC DX212513]
- Donoghue, Denis, 'The Myths of Robert Graves', New York Review of Books, 43, no.6 (4 April 1996), 27-31
- Graves and the Goddess : Essays on Robert Graves's The White Goddess, ed. by Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 2003) ISBN 1575910551
- Graves, Richard Perceval, Robert Graves and The White Goddess, 1940-85 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995) ISBN 0297815342
- Kirkham, M.C., 'Incertitude and The White Goddess, Essays in Criticism, 16 (1966), 57-72
- Lindop, Grevel, 'A Crazy Book: Robert Graves and The White Goddess, PN Review, 24, no. 1 [117] (1997 Sept-Oct), 27-29
- Musgrove, Sydney, The Ancestry of 'The White Goddess, (Bulletin No. 62, English Series, no. 11) (Auckland: Univ. of Auckland Press, 1962)
- Smeds, John. Statement and story : Robert Graves's myth-making (Åbo : Åbo Akademis Förlag, 1997)
- Vickery, John B., Robert Graves and The White Goddess (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1972)
- Vogel, Amber, 'Not Elizabeth to his Raleigh: Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and origins of The White Goddess, in Literary Couplings: Writing Couples, Collaborators, and the Construction of Authorship, ed. by Marjorie Stone and Judith Thompson (University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It primarily publishes work by scholars from the global academic community but also serves the citizens of Wisconsin by publishing important books about Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest, and...
, 2006), pp.229-239, ISBN 9780299217600
External links