| dc.contributor.author | Malott, Paul. | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T12:37:48Z | |
| dc.date.available | 1993 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1993 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | AAINN87475 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10222/55360 | |
| dc.description | Robert Graves's poetry is more often valued for its lyric gracefulness than for its intellectual cogency. Since he did not explore the more flamboyant free-verse techniques and broadly speculative themes popular with his major contemporaries, his poetry has rarely been given the close attention it deserves. His poems give sharp attention to the competing claims of the will, emotions and intellect. Many of them are insistent upon the difficulty involved in truly knowing anything; and more importantly, they confirm the value which inheres in deeply experiencing the processes of doubt. They display the siftings of half-knowledge and conjecture as well as the weighing of counter-arguments which Graves often views as a necessary prerequisite to establishing the validity of what one knows. | en_US |
| dc.description | Graves's poetic interest in the need for self-mastery intensified during his association with the American poet, Laura Riding. Both her determination to curtail any emotional posturing in her verse and her profound distrust of the body had considerable influence on Graves's stylistic and thematic development. How to persevere when burdened with a heightened sensitivity to the limitations of human knowledge became an unremitting challenge for Graves during his years with Riding. | en_US |
| dc.description | The spirited assertiveness which characterized many of his most successful poems later deteriorates into a somewhat formulaic and egotistical self-assurance. His worship of the mortal incarnations of the White Goddess and his at times blunt avowals of intuitive certainty weaken many of his poems written after 1950. This decline in the latter half of Graves's career should not blind us to the skill exercised in his best poetry for finding both wonder and at least provisional certainty amidst the ever-renewing occasions for confusion and doubt. | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1993. | en_US |
| dc.language | eng | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Dalhousie University | en_US |
| dc.publisher | | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, Modern. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, English. | en_US |
| dc.title | "The yet unsayable": The limitations of knowledge in the poetry of Robert Graves. | en_US |
| dc.type | text | en_US |
| dc.contributor.degree | Ph.D. | en_US |
