Book contents
- Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America
- Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre
- Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rebels and Refugees
- 2 The Lessons of Haiti
- 3 Virtuosity, Illegitimacy, and Haitian Royalty
- 4 Travesty and Transformation
- 5 Abolitionist Acts
- 6 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Conclusion
The Pleasures and Perils of Revolutionary Re-enactment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2022
- Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America
- Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre
- Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rebels and Refugees
- 2 The Lessons of Haiti
- 3 Virtuosity, Illegitimacy, and Haitian Royalty
- 4 Travesty and Transformation
- 5 Abolitionist Acts
- 6 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The conclusion examines Herman Melville’s 1855 Benito Cereno, a novella of shipboard slave revolt, which imagines the Haitian Revolution as a hidden source of fashion and style. Melville’s tale also gestures toward the dominant tropes that would emerge in the later nineteenth century—the stories of zombis, vodou, and cannibalism as well as the constant preoccupation with natural disaster, disease, political corruption, and abject poverty that would predominate by the early twentieth century. Those tropes emerged in response to and often continued to reanimate the early history of Haitian revolutionary performances.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century AmericaRevolution, Race and Popular Performance, pp. 179 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022