the white goddess

The White Goddess eventually had its source in Graves’s first popular success in fiction with the novel I, Claudius, an account of the first four Roman emperors. He followed this with a sequel, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (1934). While researching material for another novel set in ancient times, The Golden Fleece, Graves was seized by a revelation of what he believed to have been the true structure and nature of all ancient poetry and, indeed, of all real poetry to modern times. This vision was expanded, with recondite references to Celtic, northern European, and Mediterranean myths and prehistory, to form the basis for his most notable and controversial work of criticism, The White Goddess. [In this book], Graves presents a highly detailed account of what true poetry is, what constitutes its unvarying themes, and how these themes have been used by all real poets for thousands of years.