Robert Graves (Modern Literature Monographs)

By Katherine Snipes

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804428255
• ISBN13: 9780804428255
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: UNKNO
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Concise review of the works of a major poet, novelist

Katherine Snipes has produced a short but fairly comprehensive review of the works of Robert Graves. Her first chapter on Graves' biography filled in gaps for me that were not present in "Good-bye to all That", Graves' major work regarding his World War I experiences. The role of myth, particularly that of the White Goddess was fully documented but Graves resistance to archetypal interpretations of myth needed futher exploration. I understand his reluctance to interpret myth and religion within a Freudian reductionist determinist framework, but Graves is just as resistant to an expansive Jungian framework. I think this is because Graves found ever flowing fountains of images and associations within ancient ritual, myth, religion. To him, even the Jungian interpretation would be limiting. The chapters on Hebrew mythology, the Nazarene Gospel Restored, and King Jesus were fascinating examples of iconoclastic scholarship at its best. We will rarely see such brilliant, scholarly, original thinking again. I want to try to find the Nazarene Gospel Restored so that I can read the final chapters which is Graves' re-telling of the Christian gospels. Snipes' best interpretations were of the Claudius novels, that were actually studies in male and female acquired power. Like many World War I veterans, Graves was firmly convinced of the corrupting influence of power. Even Augustus and Claudius, two well meaning rulers, were corrupted by power, lead astray by those who sought power, or were shaped and molded by the powerful and forever bore the scar.