2.0 PERSONAL HISTORIES, NATIONAL PASTS, AND REVOLUTIONARY
POETRY: CORIOLAN ARDOUIN AND IGNACE NAU IN HAITI OF THE 1830S
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The rationale for beginning this study with the 1830s is both political and aesthetic. It
was during this time that fragmented Haitian territories and governments consolidated as one
“Haiti,” that Jean-Pierre Boyer conquered various governments on the island of Hispaniola, and
that recognition of Haitian independence was finally granted by France. These on-going changes
just decades after the Haitian Revolution were accompanied by an aesthetic revolution which
rejected poetry of earlier years and ushered in Haitian Romanticism which would set the stage
for later generations of Haitian writers in the nineteenth century.
As mentioned in the introduction, Haitian literature during the first two decades after
Haitian independence was primarily a commissioned activity for one of two Haitian
governments: a black kingdom in the north and a mulatto republic in the south. Most poetry,
neoclassical in style, was published in the southern republic. The literary journal l’Abeille
Haytienne (1817-1820) contained poems praising the republic’s Haitian leaders and celebrating