From Source to Sea: Reading Omeros (1990) and Ione (1957) through Caribbean Tidalectics

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Herbertson, Gavin
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Date
2025-10-30
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New West Indian Guide
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2213-4360
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https://brill.com/view/journals/nwig/aop/article-10.1163-22134360-bja10042/article-10.1163-22134360-bja10042.xml?srsltid=AfmBOopbRMVZPrXZKh2a9tSXJvXVj1ARn9Lvh_ehiQKPQyCT0NMpA4ym&ebody=Article%20details
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2025-10-30
Abstract PL
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This interdisciplinary article offers an “alter/native” approach to dominant Caribbean literary historiography by challenging its foundational teleological narrative—one that casts Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1990) as the apex of a linear poetic ascent. In place of this progressivist arc, the article reads Omeros through the regional logic of “tidalectics”: a sea-shaped model of historical return and layered time, first named by Kamau Brathwaite, whose conceptual currents move through the work of major Caribbean thinkers, including Édouard Glissant, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, and Walcott himself. It proposes that Omeros does not descend from a singular classical lineage but arises from a tidal network of textual relations, one in which Walcott’s early, underexamined play Ione (1957) circulates with as much generative force as its Homeric intertexts. Drawing on archival and journalistic materials—from The Daily Gleaner and Public Opinion to Federal Theatre Company programming—the article reframes Ione not as a failed precursor but as a copresent current within an oceanic aesthetic system. By restoring this overlooked work to critical visibility, it both advocates and enacts a text-centered praxis grounded in Caribbean epistemologies and attuned to the recursive rhythms of the region’s literary and cultural production.
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Derek Walcott
tidalectics
oceanic modernism
Caribbean literary historiography
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https://share.swps.edu.pl/handle/swps/1997
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cc-by
Except as otherwise noted, this item is licensed under the Attribution licence | Permitted use of copyrighted works
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From Source to Sea
From Source to Sea(270.98 KB)
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