Articulating Modernist Values Through Memories of War in 'Good-bye to All That' Anonymous College

In his autobiography Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves recounts his life experiences from his earliest education, through the First World War, and up to his later time in Majorca where he writes in 1929. Graves acts as a Modernist by supporting the changing European social values of the 1920s, namely those of sexuality and Suffragette-inspired feminist ideals, anti-militant nationalism and media-stoked patriotic propaganda, and anti-imperialist and pro-self-determination sentiments. His support of these ideals is expressed in his writing through his marriage and British social connections, his position as a modern aesthete and literary figure, and from his experiences in post-War colonial Britain and in Ireland. Through his autobiography therefore, Graves uses present memory to reflect on and critique past cultural, national, and political values, becoming a persuasive flag bearer of 1920’s Modernist values, and thus develops the historical phenomenon of memory as a past that is experienced in the present, as the present (Gerstein, 2-12-18).

Robert Graves is most effectively portrayed as a 1920’s style Modernist in his indirect attack on Victorian cultural sentimentality, sexual pruderies, and patriarchal fixations, as shown...