ABSTRACT
James Joyce and Derek Walcott are first and foremost authors of imaginative literature; their writings cannot be reduced to an underlying argumentative structure. For Joyce and Walcott, a change in one's relation to time is likely to entail changes in one's entire way of being. Joyce and Walcott are literary writers: their chosen modes of expression are, respectively, the novel and the poem. This chapter explores some of their reasons for thinking that their insights needed to be conveyed in literary form, wherein they might be illustrated in the context of "the whole whirl of organism", to recall Stanley Cavel's words once again. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce explores the relationship between nonlinear temporality, language, and mortality. Tiepolo's Hound considers the relationship between nonlinear temporality, artistic creativity, and the idea of repetition. Walcott's poem suggests that in order to disclose new meanings in things we should strive, not for originality, but for repetition.
