Madison Smartt Bell's Toussaint at the Crossroads: The Haitian Revolutionary between History and Fiction

In: Small axe: a journal of criticism, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 194-208

Abstract

Central to Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy of novels on the Haitian Revolution is the character of Toussaint Louverture. The article considers how Bell's Toussaint fits into two centuries of representations of the revolutionary leader, exploring in particular the ways in which his character is to be situated between historiography and fiction. It addresses the extensive documentary foundations of Bell's fictional account, while highlighting the imagined interpretations essential to this refiguring of the revolutionary.