Nonlinear Temporality in Joyce and Walcott

Nonlinear Temporality in Joyce and Walcott is the first dedicated comparative study of James Joyce and Derek Walcott. The book examines the ways in which both Joyces fiction and Walcotts poetry articulate a nonlinear conception of time with radical cultural and political implications. For Joyce and Walcott equally, the book argues, it is only by reconceiving time in this way that it becomes possible to envisage a means of escape from what Joyce calls force, hatred, history and what Walcott calls the madness of history seen as sequential time. A starting point for the comparisons drawn between Joyce and Walcott is their relationship to Homer. Joyces Ulysses is in one respect a rewriting of Homers Odyssey; Walcotts Omeros stands in an analogous relationship to the Iliad. This book argues that these acts of rewriting, far from being instances of influence, intertexuality, or straightforward repetition, exemplify Joyce and Walcotts complex stance, not just toward literary history, but toward the idea of history as such. The book goes on to demonstrate how an enhanced appreciation of the role of nonlinear temporality in Joyce and Walcott can help to illuminate numerous other aspects of their work.