1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910814921303321

Autore

Kersnowski Frank L. <1934->

Titolo

The early poetry of Robert Graves [[electronic resource] ] : the goddess beckons / / Frank L. Kersnowski

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, : University of Texas Press, 2002

ISBN

0-292-79639-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (193 p.)

Collana

Literary modernism series

Disciplina

821/.912

B

Soggetti

Authors, English - 20th century

World War, 1914-1918 - Veterans

Modernism (Literature) - Great Britain

Soldiers - Great Britain

War neuroses - Patients

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-169) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Machine generated contents note: CHAPTER 1 THE LUNATIC, THE LOVER, AND THE POET CHAPTER 2 THE LUNATIC: WAR CHAPTER 3 THE LUNATIC: AFTER THE WAR CHAPTER 4 THE LOVER IN THE NURSERY CHAPTER 5 THE LOVER CHAPTER 6 THE POET.

Sommario/riassunto

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 postwar 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 Drawing on interviews with Graves's family, as well as unpublished correspondence and drafts of poems, Kersnowski argues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.