100-501: The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by the English writer Robert Graves . First published in 1948, it is based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine; corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961. The White Goddess represents an approach to the study of mythology from
200-707: A Utopian India. Satyajit Ray experimented with flashbacks in The Adversary (Pratidwandi, 1972), pioneering the technique of photo-negative flashbacks. He also uses flashbacks in other films such as Nayak (1966), Kapurush- O – Mahapurush ( 1965), Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), Jalsaghar(1959). In fact, in Nayak, the entire film proceeds in a non linear narrative which explores the Hero (Arindam's) past through seven flashbacks and two dreams. He also uses extensive flashbacks in
300-730: A classical exhibition to St John's College, Oxford , but did not take his place there until after the war. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant (on probation) on 12 August. He was confirmed in his rank on 10 March 1915, and received rapid promotion, being promoted to lieutenant on 5 May 1915 and to captain on 26 October. In August 1916 an officer who disliked him spread
400-527: A decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective. Graves proposes the existence of a European deity , the "White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death", much similar to the Mother Goddess , inspired and represented by the phases of the Moon , who lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European and pagan mythologies. Graves argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with
500-511: A declaration that it existed. What he was saying-not-saying was that Christian legend , dogma and ritual are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs, and that almost the only original element in Christianity is the personality of Jesus. Graves's The White Goddess deals with goddess worship as the prototypical religion, analysing it largely from literary evidence, in myth and poetry. Graves admitted he
600-544: A flashback from the main character is used to provide a confession to his fraudulent and criminal activities. Fish & Cat is the first single-shot movie with several flashbacks. In John Brahm 's film noir " The Locket " (1946) a unique hat trick is used (a flashback within a flashback within a flashback) to give psychological depth to the story of a woman who was allegedly a kleptomaniac, inveterate liar, and murderess but had never been punished for any of her crimes. A good example of both flashback and flashforward
700-485: A high fever but without the official papers that would secure his release from the army, he chanced to share a taxi with a demobilisation officer also returning from Ireland, who completed his papers for him with the necessary secret codes. Immediately after the war, Graves with his wife, Nancy Nicholson had a growing family, but he was financially insecure and weakened physically and mentally: Very thin, very nervous and with about four years' loss of sleep to make up, I
800-809: A home with their three children, in Deià , Majorca. The house is now a museum. The year 1946 also saw the publication of his historical novel King Jesus . He published The White Goddess : A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth in 1948; it is a study of the nature of poetic inspiration, interpreted in terms of the classical and Celtic mythology he knew so well. He turned to science fiction with Seven Days in New Crete (1949) and in 1953 he published The Nazarene Gospel Restored with Joshua Podro . He also wrote Hercules, My Shipmate , published under that name in 1945 (but first published as The Golden Fleece in 1944). In 1955, he published The Greek Myths , which retells
900-454: A large body of Greek myths, each tale followed by extensive commentary drawn from the system of The White Goddess . His retellings are well respected; many of his unconventional interpretations and etymologies are dismissed by classicists. Graves in turn dismissed the reactions of classical scholars, arguing that they are too specialised and "prose-minded" to interpret "ancient poetic meaning," and that "the few independent thinkers ... [are]
1000-607: A letter that Johnstone was: "not at all the innocent fellow I took him for, but as bad as anyone could be". Johnstone remained a subject for Graves's poems despite this. Communication between them ended when Johnstone's mother found their letters and forbade further contact with Graves. Johnstone was later arrested for attempting to seduce a Canadian soldier, which removed Graves's denial about Johnstone's infidelity, causing Graves to collapse. In 1917, Graves met Marjorie Machin, an auxiliary nurse from Kent. He admired her "direct manner and practical approach to life". Graves did not pursue
1100-415: A methodology for reading images he called "iconotropy". To practice this methodology one is required to reduce "speech into its original images and rhythms" and then to combine these "on several simultaneous levels of thought". By applying this methodology Graves decoded a woodcut of The Judgement of Paris as depicting a singular Triple Goddess rather than the traditional Hera , Athena and Aphrodite of
SECTION 10
#17327805589291200-732: A month later. Graves had eight children. With his first wife, Nancy Nicholson (1899–1977), he had Jennie (who married journalist Alexander Clifford ), David (who was killed in the Second World War), Catherine (who married nuclear scientist Clifford Dalton at Aldershot ), and Sam. With his second wife, Beryl Pritchard Hodge (1915–2003), he had William (author of the well-received memoir Wild Olives: Life on Majorca with Robert Graves ), Lucia (a translator and author whose versions of novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafón have been quite successful commercially), Juan (addressed in one of Robert Graves' most famous and critically praised poems, "To Juan at
1300-481: A narrator (who is often, but not always, the character who is experiencing the memory). An early example of analepsis is in the Ramayana and Mahabharata , where the main story is narrated through a frame story set at a later time. Another early use of this device in a murder mystery was in " The Three Apples ", an Arabian Nights tale. The story begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body. After
1400-493: A nebulous goddess in early Celtic literature", and stated that he was "no authority" on the subject matter he presented. While Graves made the association between Goddesses and the moon appear "natural", it was not so to the Celts or some other ancient peoples. In response to critics, Graves accused literary scholars of being psychologically incapable of interpreting myth or too concerned with maintaining their perquisites to go against
1500-435: A nurse and professional pianist, but stopped writing to her once he learned she was engaged. About his time at Somerville, he wrote: "I enjoyed my stay at Somerville. The sun shone, and the discipline was easy." In 1917, Sassoon rebelled against the conduct of the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves feared Sassoon could face a court martial and intervened with the military authorities, persuading them that Sassoon
1600-480: A period of enforced celibacy, "which he had not enjoyed". By 1938, no longer entranced by Riding, Graves fell in love with the then-married Beryl Hodge. In 1950, after much dispute with Nicholson (whom he had not divorced yet), he married Beryl. Despite having a loving marriage with Beryl, Graves would take on a 17-year-old muse, Judith Bledsoe, in 1950. Although the relationship was described as "not overtly sexual", in 1952 Graves attacked Judith's new fiancé, getting
1700-598: A post as a professor of English Literature at Cairo University , accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding , with whom he was having an affair. Graves later claimed that one of his pupils at the university was a young Gamal Abdel Nasser , but obviously untrue as Nasser was only eight years old at the time. He returned to London briefly, where he separated from his wife under highly emotional circumstances (and at one point Riding attempted suicide) before leaving to live with Riding in Deià , Majorca . There they continued to publish letterpress books under
1800-460: A predominant feature of the television shows Lost , Arrow , Phineas and Ferb , Orange Is the New Black , 13 Reasons Why , Elite and Quicksand . Many detective shows routinely use flashback in the last act to illustrate the detective's reconstruction of the culprit's plot, e.g. Murder, She Wrote , Banacek , Columbo . The television show Leverage uses a flashback at
1900-402: A relationship of a sort, felt betrayed by Graves's new relationship and declined to go to the wedding. Graves apparently never loved Sassoon in the same way that Sassoon loved Graves. Graves's and Nicholson's marriage was strained, Graves living with " shell shock ", and having an insatiable need for sex, which Nicholson did not reciprocate. Nancy forbade any mention of the war, which added to
2000-529: A relationship with Beryl Hodge, the wife of Alan Hodge , his collaborator on The Long Week-End (1940) and The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943; republished in 1947 as The Use and Abuse of the English Language but subsequently republished several times under its original title). Graves and Beryl (they were not to marry until 1950) lived in Galmpton, Torbay until 1946, when they re-established
2100-622: A series of six preparatory schools , including King's College School in Wimbledon , Penrallt in Wales, Hillbrow School in Rugby , Rokeby School in Wimbledon and Copthorne in Sussex, from which last in 1909 he won a scholarship to Charterhouse . There he began to write poetry, and took up boxing, in due course becoming school champion at both welter- and middleweight . He claimed that this
SECTION 20
#17327805589292200-502: A success but cost him many of his friends, notably Siegfried Sassoon. In 1934, he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius . Using classical sources (under the advice of classics scholar Eirlys Roberts ) he constructed a complex and compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius , a tale extended in the sequel Claudius the God (1935). I, Claudius received
2300-422: A three-faced moon goddess model. Graves's value as a poet aside, flaws in his scholarship such as poor philology , use of inadequate texts and outdated archaeology have been criticised. Some scholars, particularly archaeologists, historians and folklorists have rejected the work – which T. S. Eliot called "A prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book" – and Graves himself was disappointed that his work
2400-424: A way to explain his past. A gag in the episode "Doof Dynasty" notes that, when a character explains his or her past, their body ripples (referencing the "ripple effect" which starts a flashback in other media). The whole episode "Act Your Age" is a flash-forward of the characters as teenagers. Several other episodes also feature flashbacks of the main characters' ancestors who, as a running gag, always seem to look like
2500-411: A woman, not as an honorary man." He seems particularly bothered by the spectre of women's writing reflecting male-dominated poetic conventions. Graves derived some of his ideas from poetic inspiration and a process of " analeptic thought ", which is a term he used for throwing one's mind back in time and receiving impressions. Visual iconography was also important to Graves's conception. Graves created
2600-485: Is demonstrated in Graves's collection Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), which contains many poems celebrating their friendship. Sassoon remarked upon a "heavy sexual element" within it, an observation supported by the sentimental nature of much of the surviving correspondence between the two men. Through Sassoon, Graves became a friend of Wilfred Owen, "who often used to send me poems from France". In September 1917, Graves
2700-491: Is known as "Queen of the Druids ". She is a goddess of fertility for plants and humans, ruling over sexual activities and passion. She also rules protection of trees, knowledge, creativity. The White Goddess has been seen as a poetic work where Graves gives his notion of man's subjection to women in love an "anthropological grandeur" and further mythologises all women in general (and several of Graves's lovers in particular) into
2800-476: Is the first scene of La Jetée (1962). As we learn a few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of the film's diegesis is a time directly following World War III . However, as we learn at the very end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis in
2900-542: Is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and film-making, where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks of events leading up to the disaster. Analepsis is also used in Night by Elie Wiesel . If flashbacks are extensive and in chronological order, one can say that these form the present of the story, while the rest of the story consists of flash forwards. If flashbacks are presented in non-chronological order,
3000-418: Is the starting point for much of Graves's argument, and Graves thought in part that his book made explicit what Frazer only hinted at. Graves wrote: Sir James Frazer was able to keep his beautiful rooms at Trinity College , Cambridge until his death by carefully and methodically sailing all around his dangerous subject, as if charting the coastline of a forbidden island without actually committing himself to
3100-410: Is when they were leaving Portugal . The Harry Potter series employs a magical device called a Pensieve , which changes the nature of flashbacks from a mere narrative device to an event directly experienced by the characters, who are thus able to provide commentary. The creator of the flashback technique in cinema was Histoire d'un crime directed by Ferdinand Zecca in 1901. An early use of
The White Goddess - Misplaced Pages Continue
3200-602: The Greek myths , his memoir of his early life—including his role in World War I — Good-Bye to All That (1929), and his speculative study of poetic inspiration The White Goddess have never been out of print. He was also a renowned short story writer, with stories such as "The Tenement" still being popular today. He earned his living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as I, Claudius ; King Jesus ; The Golden Fleece ; and Count Belisarius . He also
3300-604: The James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1934. Later, in the 1970s, the Claudius books were turned into the very popular television series I, Claudius , with Sir Derek Jacobi shown in both Britain and United States. Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius . Graves and Riding left Majorca in 1936 at the outbreak of
3400-745: The Spanish Civil War and in 1939, they moved to the United States, taking lodging in New Hope , Pennsylvania. Their volatile relationship and eventual breakup was described by Robert's nephew Richard Perceval Graves in Robert Graves: 1927–1940: the Years with Laura , and T. S. Matthews 's Jacks or Better (1977). It was also the basis for Miranda Seymour 's novel The Summer of '39 (1998). After returning to Britain, Graves began
3500-493: The 19th-century was physically degenerate, or ailing, addicted to drugs and melancholia, critically unbalanced and a true poet only in his fatalistic regard for the Goddess as the mistress who commanded his destiny". Graves described The White Goddess as "a historical grammar of the language of poetic myth ". It draws from the mythology and poetry of Wales and Ireland especially, as well as that of most of Western Europe and
3600-636: The Black Pearl at the border of the Afterlife for fourteen long years. Some months later, flashbacks that are memories belonging to Jaken ("The Silver-Scale Curse") and Hachimon ("Battle of the Moon, Part 1") eventually come. In the Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb , flashbacks and flash forwards often appear. In several episodes, the main antagonist Dr. Doofenshmirtz uses flashbacks as
3700-530: The Kanchenjunga (1962). Quentin Tarantino makes extensive use of the flashback and flashforward in many of his films. In Reservoir Dogs (1992), for example, scenes of the story present are intercut with various flashbacks to give each character's backstory and motivation additional context. In Pulp Fiction (1994), which uses a highly nonlinear narrative, traditional flashback is also used in
3800-584: The Phantom from a freak show. An extremely convoluted story may contain flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, as in Six Degrees of Separation , Passage to Marseille , and The Locket . This technique is a hallmark of Kannada movie director Upendra . He has employed this technique in his movies – Om (1995), A (1998) and the futuristic flick Super (2010) – set in 2030 containing multiple flashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015 depicting
3900-651: The Winter Solstice"), and Tomás (a writer and musician). UK government documents released in 2012 indicate that Graves turned down a CBE in 1957. In 2012, the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years, and it was revealed that Graves was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature , along with John Steinbeck (who was that year's recipient of the prize), Lawrence Durrell , Jean Anouilh and Karen Blixen . Graves
4000-446: The absurdity of the notion. Since 1916, the fear of gas obsessed me: any unusual smell, even a sudden strong scent of flowers in a garden, was enough to send me trembling. And I couldn't face the sound of heavy shelling now; the noise of a car back-firing would send me flat on my face, or running for cover. The friendship between Graves and Sassoon is documented in Graves's letters and biographies. The intensity of their early relationship
4100-495: The age of 90 years. His body was buried the next morning in the small churchyard on a hill at Deià , at the site of a shrine that had once been sacred to the White Goddess of Pelion . His second wife, Beryl Graves, died on 27 October 2003 and her body was interred in the same grave. Three of his former houses have a blue plaque on them: in Wimbledon , Brixham , and Islip . On 11 November 1985, Graves
The White Goddess - Misplaced Pages Continue
4200-456: The ancient Middle East . Relying on arguments from etymology and the use of forensic techniques to uncover what he calls 'iconotropic' redaction of original myths, Graves argues for the worship of a single goddess under many names, an idea that came to be known as " Matriarchal religion " in feminist theology of the 1970s. The Golden Bough (1922, but first edition published 1890), an early anthropological study by Sir James George Frazer ,
4300-556: The ancient cult-ritual of his proposed White Goddess and her son. Graves first wrote the book under the title of The Roebuck in the Thicket in a three-week period during January 1944, only a month after he had finished The Golden Fleece . He then left it to focus on King Jesus, a historical novel about the life of Jesus. Returning to The Roebuck in the Thicket , he renamed it The Three-Fold Muse , before finishing it and retitling it as The White Goddess . In January 1946 he sent it to
4400-517: The book Dear Robert, Dear Spike . Robert Graves was bisexual , having intense romantic relationships with both men and women, though the word he coined for it was "pseudo-homosexual." Graves was raised to be "prudishly innocent, as my mother had planned I should be." His mother, Amy, forbade speaking about sex, save in a "gruesome" context, and all skin "must be covered." At his days in Penrallt, he had "innocent crushes" on boys; one in particular
4500-457: The book Ogygia by the 17th-century bard Roderick O'Flaherty . In The White Goddess , Graves proposed a hypothetical Gallic tree goddess, Druantia, who has become somewhat popular with contemporary Neopagans . Druantia is an archetype of the eternal mother as seen in the evergreen boughs. Her name is believed to be derived from the Celtic word for oak trees, * drus or * deru . She
4600-401: The book as an influence on his fiction, especially The Owl Service . In an interview, Garner has referred to the book as "that most infuriating gold mine of imagery, The White Goddess , which I understood with great clarity on the fifth reading." Susan Cooper has also cited The White Goddess as an inspiration for her The Dark Is Rising Sequence of fantasy novels. Lloyd Alexander took
4700-484: The conflict. In 1926, he met Laura Riding , with whom he ran away in 1929 while still married to Nicholson. Prior to this, Graves, Riding and Nicholson adopted a triadic relationship they called "The Trinity." Despite the implications, Riding and Nicholson were most likely heterosexual. This triangle became the "Holy Circle" with the addition of Irish poet Geoffrey Phibbs , who himself was still married to Irish artist Norah McGuinness . This relationship revolved around
4800-410: The end of each episode to show how the protagonists successfully carried out their confidence trick on the episode's antagonist. The anime Inuyasha uses flashbacks that take one back half a century ago in the two-part episode "The Tragic Love Song of Destiny" in the sixth season narrated by the elderly younger sister of Lady Kikyo, Lady Kaede ; Episodes 147 and 148. In Princess Half-Demon ,
4900-581: The experience of frontline conflict. In later years, he omitted his war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom." At the Battle of the Somme , he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds. He gradually recovered and, apart from a brief spell back in France, spent
5000-484: The film is told in flashback, with the scene of Liberty Valance's murder occurring as a flashback within that flashback. Other examples that contains flashbacks within flashbacks are the 1968 Japanese film Lone Wolf Isazo and 2004's The Phantom of the Opera , where almost the entire film (set in 1870) is told as a flashback from 1919 (in black-and-white ) and contains other flashbacks; for example, Madame Giry rescuing
5100-706: The flashback technique in cinema occurs throughout D.W. Griffith 's film, Hearts of the World (1918): for example, during the wall scene with the Boy at 1:33. Flashbacks were first employed during the sound era in Rouben Mamoulian 's 1931 film City Streets , but were rare until about 1939 when, in William Wyler 's Wuthering Heights as in Emily Brontë 's original novel, the housekeeper Ellen narrates
SECTION 50
#17327805589295200-405: The flashbacks take place years before the events of each series, there are also cases in which new scenes set during previous episodes are shown, such as Breaking Bad' s " Más " and " Ozymandias ," whose openings are set during the show's pilot . The final three episodes of Better Call Saul , set in the post- Breaking Bad timeline, also include flashbacks taking place both between and during
5300-630: The future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started. In film, flashbacks depict the subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and they are often used to "resolve an enigma". Flashbacks are important in film noir and melodrama films. In films and television, several camera techniques, editing approaches and special effects have evolved to alert
5400-404: The main characters with slight variations in clothing, but the exact same mannerisms and voices. ( Northern Exposure episode "Cicely" used a similar device, with the main cast playing unrelated characters of 84 years before, at the founding of the village.) Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul frequently employ flashbacks, most often in the form of the cold open . While many of
5500-419: The main story to overnight visitor Mr. Lockwood, who has witnessed Heathcliff's frantic pursuit of what is apparently a ghost. More famously, also in 1939, Marcel Carné 's film Le Jour Se Lève is told almost entirely through flashback: the story starts with the murder of a man in a hotel. While the murderer, played by Jean Gabin , is surrounded by the police, several flashbacks tell the story of why he killed
5600-486: The majority view. Some Neopagans have been bemused and upset by the scholarly criticism that The White Goddess has received in recent years, while others have appreciated its poetic insight but never accepted it as a work of historical veracity. Likewise, a few scholars find some value in Graves's ideas; Michael W. Pharand, though quoting earlier criticisms, stated: "Graves's theories and conclusions, outlandish as they seemed to his contemporaries (or may appear to us), were
5700-570: The man at the beginning of the film. One of the most famous examples of a flashback is in the Orson Welles ' film Citizen Kane (1941). The protagonist, Charles Foster Kane , dies at the beginning, uttering the word Rosebud . The remainder of the film is framed by a reporter's interviewing Kane's friends and associates, in a futile effort to discover what the word meant to Kane. As the interviews proceed, pieces of Kane's life unfold in flashback, but Welles' use of such unconventional flashbacks
5800-402: The most celebrated fictional use of contested multiple testimonies. Sometimes a flashback is inserted into a film even though there was none in the original source from which the film was adapted. The 1956 film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein 's stage musical Carousel used a flashback device which somewhat takes the impact away from a very dramatic plot development later in the film. This
5900-547: The murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder in a series of flashbacks leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story. Flashbacks are also employed in several other Arabian Nights tales such as " Sinbad the Sailor " and " The City of Brass ". Analepsis was used extensively by author Ford Madox Ford , and by poet, author, historian and mythologist Robert Graves . The 1927 book The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
6000-671: The names of some of the characters in his The Chronicles of Prydain fantasy novels from Graves' The White Goddess . Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves , a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival ; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology . Robert Graves produced more than 140 works in his lifetime. His poems, his translations and innovative analysis of
6100-546: The narrative the image illustrates. Graves argues that the names of the Ogham letters in the alphabet used in parts of Gaelic Ireland and Britain contained a calendar that contained the key to an ancient liturgy involving the human sacrifice of a sacred king , and, further, that these letter names concealed lines of Ancient Greek hexameter describing the goddess. Graves' "tree calendar" has no relation to any historical Celtic calendar . His interpretations rather rely on
SECTION 60
#17327805589296200-557: The ongoing spinoff to the anime stated above, the premiere takes us back eighteen years ago, five months since the conclusion of the original series' seventh season . Episode Fifteen "Farewell Under the Lunar Eclipse" is narrated by Riku that explains what had happened before and right after the Half-Demon Princesses were born; namely where Inuyasha and nineteen-year-old Kagome Higurashi had ended up, trapped within
6300-483: The poets, who try to keep civilisation alive." He published a volume of short stories, ¡Catacrok! Mostly Stories, Mostly Funny , in 1956. In 1961, he became Professor of Poetry at Oxford, a post he held until 1966. In 1967, Robert Graves published, together with Omar Ali-Shah , a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam . The translation quickly became controversial; Graves was attacked for trying to break
6400-441: The police called on him in the process. He later had three successive female muses, who came to dominate his poetry. During the early 1970s, Graves began to experience increasingly severe memory loss. By his 80th birthday in 1975, he had come to the end of his working life. He lived for another decade, in an increasingly dependent condition, and had taken a vow of silence before dying of heart failure on 7 December 1985 at
6500-455: The popular song "Father O'Flynn", and his mother was his father's second wife, Amalie Elisabeth Sophie von Ranke (1857–1951), grandniece of the historian Leopold von Ranke . His uncle was the admiral commanding the Nore during World War I , Sir Richard Poore, 4th Baronet . At the age of seven, double pneumonia following measles almost took Graves's life, the first of three occasions when he
6600-435: The post of Poet Laureate . Analepsis A flashback , more formally known as analepsis , is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story . Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory . In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in
6700-648: The public perceived as his gullibility in falling for the Shah brothers' deception. In 1968, Graves was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry by Queen Elizabeth II . His private audience with the Queen was shown in the BBC documentary film Royal Family , which aired in 1969. From the 1960s until his death, Robert Graves frequently exchanged letters with Spike Milligan . Many of their letters to each other are collected in
6800-617: The publishers, and in May 1948 it was published in the UK, and in June 1948 in the US, as The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth . Graves believed that one could be in the true presence of the White Goddess when reading a poem, but in his view, this could be achieved only by a true poet of the wild, and not a classical poet, or even a Romantic poet, of whom he spoke critically: "The typical poet of
6900-482: The relationship when he realised Machin had a fiancé on the Front. This began a period where Graves began to be interested in women with more masculine traits. Nancy Nicholson, his future wife, was an ardent feminist: she kept her hair short, wore trousers, and had "boyish directness and youth." Her feminism never conflicted with Graves's own ideas of female superiority. Siegfried Sassoon, who felt as if Graves and he had
7000-522: The remainder of the war in England. One of Graves's friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon , a fellow officer in his regiment. They both convalesced at Somerville College, Oxford , which was used as a hospital for officers. "How unlike you to crib my idea of going to the Ladies' College at Oxford," Sassoon wrote to him in 1917. At Somerville College, Graves met and fell in love with Marjorie,
7100-457: The residents included Robert Bridges , John Masefield (his landlord), Edmund Blunden , Gilbert Murray and Robert Nichols . Later, the family moved to Worlds End Cottage on Collice Street , Islip , Oxfordshire. His most notable Oxford companion was T. E. Lawrence , then a Fellow of All Souls , with whom he discussed contemporary poetry and shared in the planning of elaborate pranks. By this time, he had become an atheist . His work
7200-411: The result of careful observation." According to Graves's biographer Richard Perceval Graves , Laura Riding played a crucial role in the development of Graves's thoughts when writing The White Goddess , despite the fact the two were estranged at that point. On reviewing the book, Riding was furious: "Where once I reigned, now a whorish abomination has sprung to life, a Frankenstein pieced together from
7300-629: The rubric of the Seizin Press , founded and edited the literary journal, Epilogue and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928); both had great influence on modern literary criticism, particularly New Criticism . In 1927, Graves published Lawrence and the Arabs , a commercially successful biography of T. E. Lawrence . The autobiographical Good-Bye to All That (1929, revised by him and republished in 1957) proved
7400-622: The rumour that he was the brother of a captured German spy who had assumed the name " Karl Graves ". The problem resurfaced in a minor way in the Second World War , when a suspicious rural policeman blocked his appointment to the Special Constabulary . He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier , in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about
7500-467: The second and expanded edition, that the male-dominant monotheistic god of Judaism and its successors were the cause of the White Goddess's downfall, and thus the source of much of the modern world's woe. He describes Woman as occupying a higher echelon than mere poet, that of the Muse Herself. He adds: "This is not to say that a woman should refrain from writing poems; only, that she should write as
7600-401: The sequence titled "The Gold Watch". Other films, such as his two-part Kill Bill (Part I 2003, Part II 2004), also feature a narrative that bounces between present time and flashbacks. The television series Quantico , Kung Fu , Psych , How I Met Your Mother , Grounded for Life , Once Upon a Time , and I Didn't Do It use flashbacks in every episode. Flashbacks were also
7700-403: The shards of my life and thoughts." The book was a major influence on the thinking of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath , with the latter identifying to some extent with the goddess figure herself. Arguably, what Jacqueline Rose called "the cliché behind the myth – woman as inspiration, woman as drudge" – ultimately had a negative impact on Plath's life and work. Alan Garner has cited
7800-474: The spell of famed passages in Edward FitzGerald 's Victorian translation, and L. P. Elwell-Sutton , an orientalist at Edinburgh University , maintained that the manuscript used by Ali-Shah and Graves, which Ali-Shah and his brother Idries Shah claimed had been in their family for 800 years, was a forgery. The translation was a critical disaster and Graves's reputation suffered severely due to what
7900-535: The time at which the story takes place can be ambiguous: An example of such an occurrence is in Slaughterhouse-Five where the narrative jumps back and forth in time, so there is no actual present time line. Os Lusíadas is a story about a voyage of Vasco da Gama to India and back. The narration starts when they were arriving in Africa but it quickly flashes back to the beginning of the story which
8000-472: The very day of my demobilization never to be under anyone's orders for the rest of my life. Somehow I must live by writing. In October 1919, he took up his place at the University of Oxford , soon changing course to English Language and Literature , though managing to retain his Classics exhibition . In consideration of his health, he was permitted to live a little outside Oxford , on Boars Hill , where
8100-462: The very same scene. Occasionally, a story may contain a flashback within a flashback, with the earliest known example appearing in Jacques Feyder 's L'Atlantide . Little Annie Rooney (1925) contains a flashback scene in a Chinese laundry, with a flashback within that flashback in the corner of the screen. In John Ford 's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the main action of
8200-406: The viewer that the action shown is a flashback or flashforward; for example, the edges of the picture may be deliberately blurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusual coloration or sepia tone, or monochrome when most of the story is in full color, may be used. The scene may fade or dissolve, often with the camera focused on the face of the character and there is typically a voice-over by
8300-412: The worship and reverence of Riding. Graves and Phibbs were both to sleep with Riding. When Phibbs attempted to leave the relationship, Graves was sent to track him down, even threatening to kill Phibbs if he did not return to the circle. When Phibbs resisted, Riding threw herself out of a window, Graves following suit to reach her. Graves's commitment to Riding was so strong that he entered, on her word,
8400-406: Was "loudly ignored" by many Celtic scholars. The White Goddess was accepted as history by many non-scholarly readers. According to Ronald Hutton , it "remains a major source of confusion about the ancient Celts and influences many un-scholarly views of Celtic paganism". Hilda Ellis Davidson criticised Graves as having "misled many innocent readers with his eloquent but deceptive statements about
8500-648: Was a boy named Ronny, who "climbed trees, killed pigeons with a catapult and broke all the school rules while never seeming to get caught." At Charterhouse, an all-boys school, it was common for boys to develop "amorous but seldom erotic" relationships, which the headmaster mostly ignored. Graves described boxing with a friend, Raymond Rodakowski, as having a "a lot of sex feeling". And although Graves admitted to loving Raymond, he dismissed it as "more comradely than amorous." In his fourth year at Charterhouse, Graves met "Dick" (George "Peter" Harcourt Johnstone) with whom he developed "an even stronger relationship". Johnstone
8600-447: Was a prominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versions of The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular for their clarity and entertaining style. Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God . Graves's eldest half-brother, Philip Perceval Graves , achieved success as a journalist and his younger brother, Charles Patrick Graves ,
8700-400: Was a writer and journalist. Graves was born into a middle-class family in Wimbledon , then part of Surrey , now part of south London. He was the eighth of ten children born to Alfred Perceval Graves (1846–1931), who was the sixth child and second son of Charles Graves , Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe . His father was an Irish school inspector, Gaelic scholar and the author of
8800-474: Was among sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey 's Poets' Corner . The inscription on the stone was taken from Wilfred Owen 's "Preface" to his poems and reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." Of the 16 poets, Graves was the only one still living at the time of the commemoration ceremony, though he would die less than
8900-524: Was an object of adoration in Graves's early poems. Graves's feelings for Johnstone were exploited by bullies, who led Graves to believe that Johnstone was seen kissing the choir-master. Graves, jealous, demanded the choir-master's resignation. During the First World War, Johnstone remained a "solace" to Graves. Despite Graves's own "pure and innocent" view of Johnstone, Graves's cousin Gerald wrote in
9000-460: Was clearly in love with Peter (disguised by the name "Dick" in Good-Bye to All That ), he denied that their relationship was ever sexual. He was warned about Peter's proclivities by other contemporaries. Among the masters his chief influence was George Mallory , who introduced him to contemporary literature and took him mountaineering in the holidays. In his final year at Charterhouse, he won
9100-511: Was despaired of by his doctors as a result of afflictions of the lungs, the second being the result of a war wound and the third when he contracted Spanish influenza in late 1918, immediately before demobilisation . At school, Graves was enrolled as Robert von Ranke Graves, and in Germany his books are published under that name, but before and during the First World War the name caused him difficulties. Graves received his early education at
9200-417: Was done because the plot of Carousel was then considered unusually strong for a film musical. In the film version of Camelot (1967), according to Alan Jay Lerner , a flashback was added not to soften the blow of a later plot development but because the stage show had been criticized for shifting too abruptly in tone from near-comedy to tragedy. In Billy Wilder 's film noir Double Indemnity (1944),
9300-476: Was experiencing shell shock and that they should treat him accordingly. Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart , a military hospital in Edinburgh, where he was treated by W. H. R. Rivers and met fellow patient Wilfred Owen . Graves was treated here as well. Graves also had shell shock, or neurasthenia as it was then called, but he was never hospitalised for it, I thought of going back to France, but realized
9400-560: Was in response to persecution because of the German element in his name, his outspokenness, his scholarly and moral seriousness, and his poverty relative to the other boys. He also sang in the choir, meeting there an aristocratic boy three years younger, G. H. "Peter" Johnstone , with whom he began an intense romantic friendship, the scandal of which led ultimately to an interview with the headmaster. However, Graves himself called it "chaste and sentimental" and "proto-homosexual," and though he
9500-588: Was not a medieval historian, but a poet, and thus based his work on the premise that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry... Graves concluded, in
9600-402: Was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics . While still an undergraduate he established a grocers shop on the outskirts of Oxford but the business soon failed. He also failed his BA degree but was exceptionally permitted to take in 1925 a Bachelor of Letters by dissertation instead, allowing him to pursue a teaching career. In 1926, he took up
9700-408: Was rejected because, even though he had written several historical novels, he was still primarily seen as a poet, and committee member Henry Olsson was reluctant to award any Anglo-Saxon poet the prize before the death of Ezra Pound , believing that other writers did not match his talent. UK government documents released in 2023 reveal that in 1967 Graves was considered for, but then passed over for,
9800-454: Was seconded for duty with a garrison battalion. Graves's army career ended dramatically with an incident which could have led to a charge of desertion . Having been posted to Limerick in late 1918, he "woke up with a sudden chill, which I recognized as the first symptoms of Spanish influenza ." "I decided to make a run for it," he wrote, "I should at least have my influenza in an English, and not an Irish, hospital." Arriving at Waterloo with
9900-755: Was thought to have been influenced by William K. Howard 's The Power and the Glory . Lubitsch used a flashback in Heaven Can Wait (1943) which tells the story of Henry Van Cleve. Though usually used to clarify plot or backstory, flashbacks can also act as an unreliable narrator . The multiple and contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime in Errol Morris 's 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line are presented as flashbacks based on divergent testimony. Akira Kurosawa 's 1950 Rashomon does this in
10000-475: Was waiting until I got well enough to go to Oxford on the Government educational grant. I knew that it would be years before I could face anything but a quiet country life. My disabilities were many: I could not use a telephone, I felt sick every time I travelled by train, and to see more than two new people in a single day prevented me from sleeping. I felt ashamed of myself as a drag on Nancy, but had sworn on
#928071