ABSTRACT
During the latter years of the July Monarchy, the Romantic writer Alphonse de Lamartine composed Toussaint Louverture, a fictionalized verse drama about the eponymous leader of the Haitian Revolution. Toussaint Louverture was performed a few times to tepid reviews in 1850, and has since been largely forgotten by the French stage. Lamartine wrote Toussaint Louverture in memory of the events that led to the proclamation of Haitian independence. The action of the play begins in 1802, when Napoleon expedited General Leclerc and a regiment of soldiers to Saint-Domingue with the intention of wresting the island away from the firm grip of Toussaint Louverture's leadership and bringing it more squarely under the control of Paris. Both Lamartine's play and Hugo's Bug-Jargal take place during the Haitian Revolution, mingling real-life characters and events with fictional ones. Toussaint Louverture does not just replicate the representational and rhetorical structures of its predecessors' works; it also expands upon them.
