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Remembering Breen’s Encomium: “Classic Style”, History and Tradition in Derek Walcott’s Omeros

In this paper, I will explain how the fortunate discovery of the source for a passage quoted in Omeros, what Walcott refers to as ‘‘Breen’s Encomium’’ has helped me to formulate a deeper understanding of Walcott as a postcolonial poet engaged with a view of history that relates to the classical tradition. In his 1974 essay ‘‘The Muse of History’’ we find Walcott’s lengthiest critical explanation of his views on history. He prefaces the essay with a quote from Joyce, ‘‘History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake’’. Then he proposes a view of poetic inheritance, of which that other Bloom, Harold, would be proud: