“The White Goddess. The Historical Grammar of Poetic Mythology ” ( The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth ) is a mythological treatise of Robert Graves , which was released in 1948. The supplemented and revised editions came out in 1952 and 1961. The book is based on essays published by Graves in Wales magazine.
The rich poetic fantasy of Graves distinguishes between the images of the most different goddesses - Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Semitic - a single image of the mother goddess . Behind all mythologies, according to Graves, is the White Goddess - the deity of birth, love and death. These three hypostases correspond to the three phases of the moon . From the ritual veneration of the goddess, “true” poetry is born. Any poet is a kind of priest of this eternal femininity.
According to Jorge Luis Borges , Graves' book "claims to be the first grammar of poetic language", the core of which is mythology. However, in reality it is “a magnificent myth, either found by Graves or invented by Graves” in an effort to “return poetry to its magical sources” [1] .
Along with the writings of Maria Gimbutas about Old Europe [2] [3], the book of Graves formed the basis [4] of the Wiccan cult of the Triune Goddess .
Criticism
Critics, recognizing the poetic value of the work, noted the use of outdated sources and the low scientific value of the findings [5] [6] .
Graves, in turn, was disappointed that his work was ignored by many Celtic scholars [7] , and accused critics of failing to interpret the myth [8] .
In the future, the work gained particular popularity among non-academic researchers of Celtic paganism and at the same time served as a source of widespread misconceptions [9] [10] .
See also
- Old europe
- The Triune Goddess
Notes
- ↑ Catalogs - NBUV National Library of Ukraine imeni V. І. Vernadsky
- ↑ Gilchrist, Roberta (1999). Gender and Archeology: Contesting the Past . Routledge p.25. ISBN 0-415-21599-4 , ISBN 978-0-415-21599-2 .
- ↑ Talalay, Lauren E. (1999). (Review of) The Living Goddesses in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1999-10-05.
- ↑ The Myth and Ritual School: JG Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists . Hutton, Ronald (1997). "The Neolithic Great Goddess: A Study in Modern Tradition" from Antiquity , March 1997.
- ↑ Wood, Juliette. Chapter 1, The Concept of the Goddess // The Concept of the Goddess / Sandra Billington, Miranda Green. - Routledge, 1999 .-- P. 12. - ISBN 9780415197892 .
- ↑ Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy . - John Wiley & Sons , 1993. - P. 320. - ISBN 9780631189466 .
- ↑ White, Donna R. A Century of Welsh Myth in Children's Literature . p. 75.
- ↑ Inter alia - The White Goddess, Farrar Straus Giroux, p. 224. ISBN 0-374-50493-8
- ↑ Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy . - John Wiley & Sons , 1993. - P. 145. - ISBN 9780631189466 .
- ↑ Davidson, Hilda Ellis (1998). Roles of the Northern Goddess , page 11. Routledge . ISBN 0-415-13611-3