Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Walcott, Derek (Vol. 160) - Charles Lock (essay date spring 2000)

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Charles Lock (essay date spring 2000)

SOURCE: Lock, Charles. “Derek Walcott's Omeros: Echoes from a White-Throated Vase.” Massachusetts Review 41, no. 1 (spring 2000): 9–31.

[In the following essay, Lock discusses the problematic aesthetic representation of the female subject in Western literary tradition and in Walcott's evocation of Helen in Omeros.]

In reading Omeros we are struck, as we are in the Iliad, by the silence of Helen. What is this silence, and how in a poem is silence to be figured? To depict the woman, without representing her voice, is for the poet to exercise his (specifically his) descriptive powers, and to render the woman an object, whose silence is matched by its/her passivity. What remains is of course beautiful, but it is a beauty achieved at the expense of the person. The familiar narrative is announced in terms of her (or its) shadow, appearance rather than substance, object...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Lucas (review date 2 February 1990)
   2. John Lucas (review date 5 October 1990)
   3. Christopher Benfey (review date 29 October 1990)
   4. Nicholas Everett (review date 11 July 1991)
   5. Sven Birkerts (review date February 1993)
   6. Stephen Breslow (essay date spring 1993)
   7. Stephen Breslow (review date winter 1994)
   8. Derek Walcott and Marina Benjamin (interview date 21 July 1995)
   9. John Bayley (review date 27 March 1997)
   10. Jahan Ramazani (essay date May 1997)
   11. Derek Walcott and Rose Styron (interview date May–June 1997)
   12. Bill Greenwell (review date 15 August 1997)
   13. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 8 September 1997)
   14. Richard Sanger (review date 19 September 1997)
   15. Ian Sansom (review date 11 December 1997)
   16. Adam Kirsch (review date 15 December 1997)
   17. Bruce King (review date winter 1998)
   18. Richard Tillinghast (review date winter 1998)
   19. John Thieme (essay date 1999)
   20. Bruce King (review date winter 1999)
   21. Ronny Noor (review date spring 1999)
   22. Iain Bamforth (review date 1 October 1999)
   23. Jeff Gundy (review date spring 2000)
   24. Judith Kitchen (review date spring 2000)
   25. Charles Lock (essay date spring 2000)
   26. A. Alvarez (review date 11 May 2000)
   27. Adam Kirsch (review date 15 September 2000)
   28. Jim Hannan (review date autumn 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Derek Walcott