The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth

1948

Special Collections PN1077 GS12 1948a

New York: Creative Age Press

The classical Muse inspired poets, singing through them and their work, but, as the centuries passed, her form began to change. Drawing on European myth and poetry, Robert Graves constructed an elaborate and idiosyncratic myth around the White Goddess, an idealised, powerful deity, a single goddess who has been worshipped under many names and whom he identified with the Muse, the source of all poetry. To illustrate her continuing influence in English poetry, Graves quotes John Skelton’s ‘Garland of Laurell.’