Truth and Representation: The Confrontation of History and Mythology in Omeros

Abstract

Barbara Webb suggests in Myth and History in Caribbean Fiction that modern writers frequently reject the disciplinary constraints of historical representation "in favor of what they consider the more creative forms of mythic discourse" (Myth 3). "Among Caribbean writers," proposes Webb, the issue of privileging mythical forms of representation is directly related to the putatively "negative perception of New World history as a legacy of dispossession, exploitation and betrayal" (Myth 3). "In an effort to circumvent the alienating effects" of historical discourse, argues Webb, "some Caribbean writers have turned to the archetypal patterns of myth" (Myth 3). Accordingly, concludes Webb, Derek Walcott frames his 1974 essay "The Muse of History" with the following epigraph from James Joyce: "History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake" (Myth 3). Walcott presumably proposes here a complete "rejection of the concept of historical time" and embraces instead "the timeless universality of myth" (Myth 3). "In the New World," writes Walcott,