SOURCE: Thieme, John. “Critical Overview and Conclusion.” In Derek Walcott, pp. 198–205. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Thieme provides an overview of the critical reaction to Walcott's work over a period of five decades, including a discussion of notable publications that have contributed to the critical study of Walcott's oeuvre.

This chapter provides a brief summary of some of the main strands in Walcott criticism, with a particular emphasis on books and monographs about his work; it also attempts to locate the present study in relation to some of these strands. Criticism of Walcott's writing has moved through various phases during the fifty years of his writing career to date. Initially, reflecting the locations in which it was published or performed, responses came almost exclusively from within the Caribbean region; after his poetry was published in Britain and the United States, it increasingly attracted the attention...