Haiti’s Literary Legacies: Romanticism and the Unthinkable Revolution

Haiti’s Literary Legacies unpacks the theoretical, historical, and political resonance of the Haitian revolution across a multiplicity of European and American Romanticisms, including Haitian, British, French, and German traditions. Often referred to as the only successful slave uprising in history, the Haitian revolution at once fulfilled and surpassed Enlightenment conceptions of freedom and universality in ways that were crucial to global Romanticism, and yet these effects are only beginning to be studied by scholars and historians of Romanticism. This volume works at the intersection of Romantic and Caribbean studies to outline the myriad ways that the politicized literature of Romantic period engages the revolution in Haiti. Demonstrating the centrality of the Haitian revolution to the larger configuration of transnational Romantic writing, this collection articulates a literary legacy that speaks to our contemporary moment and our ongoing attempts to come to terms with the political, historical, and ecological genealogies of the present.