The Classical and the Modern Epic:
Homer's Iliad and Walcott's Omeros



Primary Texts:

Homer. The Iliad. trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1990.

Walcott, Derek. Omeros. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990.

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds.. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Litaratures. New York: Routledge, 1989.

Baer, William, ed. Conversations with Derek Walcott. Oxford: U of Mississippi P, 1996.

Bhabha, Homi K., ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford UP, 1973.

------ed., Homer: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Brown, Stewart, ed. The Art of Derek Walcott. Chester Springs, PA.: Dufour P, 1991.

Davies, Gregson, ed. The Poetics of Derek Walcott: Intertextual Perspectives. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1997.

“Derek Walcott.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Volume 42 (1987).

Dove, Rita. “Either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 14, 1 (1987): 49-76.

Finley, M.I. The World of Odysseus. New York: Signet, 1974.

Fox, Robert Elliot. “Derek Walcott: History as Dis-Ease.” Callalloo 9, 2 (1986): 331-40.

Fuller, Mary. “Forgetting the Aeneid.” American Literary History 4,3 (1992): 517-38.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literature. Oxford UP, 1989.

Griffin, Jasper. Homer on Life and Death. New York: Oxford UP, 1980.

Hamner, Robert D. ed. Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott. Washington: Three Continents P, 1993.

------Derek Walcott. Twayne, 1993.

Lernout, Geert. “Derek Walcott’s Omeros: The Isle is Full of Voices.” Kunapipi 14.2 (1992): 90-104.

Livingston, James T. “Derek Walcott’s Omeros: Recovering the Mythical.” Journal of Caribbean Studies 8, 3 (1991-92): 131-40.

Myrsiades, Kostas, ed. Approaches to Teaching Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. New York: MLA, 1987.

Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979.

Parker, Michael, and Roger Starkey. eds. Postcolonial Literatures: Achebe, Ngugi, Desai, Walcott. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Ramazani, Jahan. “The Wound of History: Walcott’s Omeros and the Postcolonial Poetics of Affliction.” PMLA 112, 3 (May, 1997): 405-17.

Redfield, James. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979.

Schein, Seth. The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.

Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Touchstone P, 1995.

Terada, Rei. Derek Walcott’s Poetry: American Mimicry. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1992.

Walcott, Derek. The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1993.

------Collected Poems, 1948-84. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1986.

------”The Muse of History.” Is Massa Day Dead? Black Moods in the Caribbean. Ed. Orde Coombs. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1974. 1-27.

Willcock, Malcolm. A Companion to the Iliad. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.

Willis, Susan. “Caliban as Poet: Reversing the Maps of Domination.” Massachusetts Review 23, 4 (1987): 615-30.

Woodford, Susan. The Trojan War in Ancient Art. Cornell UP, 1993.