Author | Derek Walcott |
---|---|
Cover artist | Derek Walcott |
Language | English |
Subject | Post-colonialism |
Genre | Epic poetry, World literature, Postmodernism |
Set in | Saint Lucia and Brookline, Massachusetts, late 20th century; also some sequences in the late 18th century |
Publisher | Farrar, Straus & Giroux |
Publication date | 1990 |
Publication place | Saint Lucia |
Media type | Print: hardback |
Pages | 325 |
ISBN | 9780374225919 |
819.8 | |
LC Class | PR9272.W3 O44 |
Preceded by | The Arkansas Testament |
Followed by | The Bounty |
Website | https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571144594-omeros/ |
Omeros is an epic poem by Saint Lucian writer Derek Walcott, first published in 1990. The work is divided into seven "books" containing a total of sixty-four chapters. Many critics view Omeros as Walcott's finest work. [1]
In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. [2]
The poem very loosely echoes and references Homer and some of his major characters from the Iliad . Some of the poem's major characters include the island fishermen Achille and Hector, the retired English officer Major Plunkett and his wife Maud, the housemaid Helen, the blind man Seven Seas (who symbolically represents Homer), and the author himself. Although the main narrative of the poem takes place on the island of St. Lucia, where Walcott was born and raised, Walcott also includes scenes from Brookline, Massachusetts (where Walcott was living and teaching at the time of the poem's composition) and the character Achille imagines a voyage from Africa onto a slave ship that's headed for the Americas; also, in Book Five of the poem, Walcott narrates some of his travel experiences in a variety of cities around the world, including Lisbon, London, Dublin, Rome, and Toronto.
The island of Saint Lucia was historically known as "the Helen of the West Indies" during the 18th century because colonial control of the island frequently changed hands between the French and English who fought over the island due to its strategic location vis-à-vis North America. [3] In reference to this appellation, Walcott sometimes personifies the island as if it is a character referred to as "Helen", symbolically tying the island to both the Homeric Helen as well as to the housemaid Helen.
Unlike a conventional epic poem, Walcott divides the narrative between his characters and his own voice so that his epic has no main protagonist or "hero". Moreover, his narrative does not follow a clear, linear path. Instead, Walcott jumps around in time and from character to character without much concern for narrative plotting. These tendencies, combined with Walcott's insertion of himself into the poem, as well as his commentary on his characters as fictional creations, make the poem a postmodernist epic. [4]
Although most of the poem is supposed to take place in the late 20th century, there are sections of the poem that take place in other time periods. For instance, there are chapters that take place in the West Indies in the late 18th century (following the ancestors of the characters Achille and Plunkett). These passages describe the Battle of the Saintes which took place off the coast of St. Lucia in 1782 and ended with the British fleet, under the command of Admiral George Rodney (who appears in the poem), defeating the French. For another example, in Books 4 and 5 of the poem, Walcott also writes about and in the voice of the 19th-century activist Caroline Weldon who worked on behalf of the rights of the Lakota Sioux Indian tribe in the Dakotas.
The plot of Omeros can be divided into three main narrative threads that crisscross throughout the book. The first one follows the Homeric rivalry of Achille and Hector over their love for Helen. There is also a minor character named Philoctete, an injured fisherman, inspired by Homer's Philoctetes. The second thread is the interwoven story of Major Plunkett and his wife Maud, who live on the island and must reconcile themselves to the history of British colonization of St. Lucia. The final thread is the autobiographical narrative of Walcott himself. Walcott, by using myth and history, advocates the need to return to traditions in order to challenge the modernity born out of colonialism. [4]
Through the vast majority of the poem, Walcott uses a three-line form that is reminiscent of the terza rima form that Dante used for the Divine Comedy . However, Walcott's form is much looser than Dante's. His rhyme scheme does not follow a regular pattern like Dante's. Although Walcott claimed in an interview that the poem was written in hexameter, this characterization of the poem's form is inaccurate. [5] Lance Callahan notes that "despite the fact that most lines are composed of twelve syllables, so wildly varied is the metrical construction of the poem that at times it gives the appearance of being in free verse". [6] Jill Gidmark notes that "Walcott's lines are visually, though not metrically, the same length". [7]
For one brief section (Section III) of the opening chapter of Book 4, Walcott breaks completely with the three-line form and writes rhyming couplets in tetrameter.
Soon after its publication in 1990, Omeros received praise from publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times Book Review , the latter of which chose the book as one of its "Best Books of 1990" and called it "one of Mr. Walcott's finest poetic works." [8] The book also won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1991. In 1992, Walcott was also awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Nobel committee member who presented the award, Professor Kjell Espmark, singled out Walcott's most recent achievement at the time, Omeros, recognizing the book as a "major work". [9] Walcott painted the cover for the book, which depicts some of his main characters at sea together in a boat. In 2004, the critic Hilton Als of The New Yorker called the book "Walcott's masterpiece" and characterized the poem as "the perfect marriage of Walcott’s classicism and his nativism". [10]
Walcott has adapted his poem for performance at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, London. Starring Saint Lucian actor Joseph Marcell and Jade Anouka, it was presented in May and June 2014, [11] and was reprised in October 2015. [12]
Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright.
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and sound symbolism, to produce musical or other artistic effects. Most written poems are formatted in verse: a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate structure. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym for poetry.
Publius Papinius Statius was a Latin poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the Thebaid; a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae; and an unfinished epic, the Achilleid. He is also known for his appearance as a guide in the Purgatory section of Dante's epic poem, the Divine Comedy.
"Ulysses" is a poem in blank verse by the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), written in 1833 and published in 1842 in his well-received second volume of poetry. An oft-quoted poem, it is a popular example of the dramatic monologue. Facing old age, mythical hero Ulysses describes his discontent and restlessness upon returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, after his far-ranging travels. Despite his reunion with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, Ulysses yearns to explore again.
Terza rima is a rhyming verse form, in which the poem, or each poem-section, consists of tercets with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: The last word of the second line in one tercet provides the rhyme for the first and third lines in the tercet that follows. The poem or poem-section may have any number of lines, but it ends with either a single line or a couplet, which repeats the rhyme of the middle line of the previous tercet.
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A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there is usually a large cast, multiple voices, dialogue, narration, description, and action in a novelistic manner.
Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. Note that other non-independent islands may include the Caribbean unincorporated territories of the United States, however literature from this region has not yet been studied as a separate category and is independent from West Indian literature. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.
The Posthomerica is an epic poem in Greek hexameter verse by Quintus of Smyrna. Probably written in the 3rd century AD, it tells the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium (Troy). The poem is an abridgement of the events described in the epic poems Aethiopis and Iliou Persis by Arctinus of Miletus, and the Little Iliad by Lesches, all now-lost poems of the Epic Cycle.
The Gulf Stream is an 1899 oil painting by the American artist Winslow Homer. It shows a man in a small dismasted rudderless fishing boat struggling against the storm-tossed waves and perils of the sea, presumably near the Gulf Stream, and was the artist's statement on a theme that had interested him for more than a decade. During the time he explored this theme, Homer, a New Englander, boated often near Florida, Cuba, and the Caribbean.
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Raymond R. Ramcharitar is a Trinidadian poet, playwright, fiction writer, historian and media and cultural critic.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
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John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian Christian poet, writer, journalist and librarian. He has been awarded the Saint Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) for his contribution to the development of Saint Lucian arts and culture. In 2017, his Collected Poems (1975–2015) were published by Peepal Tree Press.