“My pen replaced a brush”: Derek Walcott’s Tiepolo’s Hound and Brushing History against the Grain

In Tiepolo’s Hound, Walcott is obsessed by a mysterious hound from a painting (allegedly) by Tiepolo or Veronese. Using a selection of Tiepolo’s and Veronese’s paintings and Walter Benjamin’s meditations on history as a springboard, I will argue that Tiepolo is mentioned in the poem’s title because his dogs are figures rejecting marginality and enabling Walcott both to revisit history from the “underdog”’s perspective and to dispute the notion of a dominated future.