Haitian Revolution - Literature and Art

Literature and Art

• English poet William Wordsworth published his sonnet "To Toussaint Louverture" in January 1803.
• Heinrich von Kleist's "Verlobung in St. Domingo" (Betrothal in St. Domingo), published in 1811, sets a complex primary narrative against the background of the Haitian Revolution.
• A 4-part short fiction series called "Theresa—A Haytien Tale" appeared in the newspaper "Freedom's Journal" in 1828 on January 18, 25, February 8, 15. This is one of the earliest works of short fiction by an African American author, "S", tentatively identified as Prince Saunders (Foster 2006).
• Published in 1855, Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" narrates a fictional slave revolt on a the ship "Saint Dominick" in the year 1799, wherein the slaves take complete control of the ship.
• In 1939, American artist Jacob Lawrence created a series of paintings, The Life of Toussaint Louverture, which he later adapted into prints.
• Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier's second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949), (translated into English 1957), explores the Haitian Revolution in depth. It is one of the novels that inaugurated the Latin American renaissance in fiction beginning in the mid-20th century.
• Madison Smartt Bell has written a trilogy called All Souls Rising (1995) about the life of Toussaint Louverture and the slave uprising.
• Though not referred to by name, Haiti is the backdrop for the 1990 Broadway musical Once On This Island by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. The musical, based on the novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy, describes the social stratification of the island and contains one song which briefly outlines the history of the Haitian Revolution.
• In 2004 an exhibition of paintings entitled Caribbean Passion: Haiti 1804, by artist Kimathi Donkor, was held in London to celebrate the bicentenary of Haiti's revolution.

Template:William Dietrich sets his 2012 novel, "The Emerald Storm," during the Haitian Revolution.