Bringing in the Chorus
Bringing in the Chorus
The Haitian Revolution Plays of C.L.R. James and Edouard Glissant
This chapter examines the concept of hamartia in C.L.R. James’s revision of his play Toussaint Louverture (1936)—renamed The Black Jacobins—and Edouard Glissant’s Monsieur Toussaint: A Play (1961) as case studies to explore the use of the tragic to talk about the problems of revolutionary leadership. I discuss Mozart and Bertolt Brecht in relationship to C.L.R. James’s Haitian revolutionary dramas. I focus on a critical and theoretical discussion of the friendship between Paul Robeson and C.L.R. James and questions of Black masculinity and performance as it relates to their collaboration.
Keywords: C.L.R. James, Edouard Glissant, hamartia, Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht
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