......And the Dogs Were Silent/......Et les chiens se taisaient - Softcover

Césaire, Aimé

Softcover

ISBN 10: 147803064X ISBN 13: 9781478030645

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2024

Synopsis

Available to readers for the first time, Aimé Césaire’s three-act drama . . . . . . And the Dogs Were Silent—written during the Vichy regime in Martinique in 1943 and lost until 2008—dramatizes the Haitian Revolution and the rise and fall of Toussaint Louverture as its heroic leader. This bilingual English and French edition stands apart from Césaire’s more widely known 1946 closet drama. Following the slave revolts that sparked the revolution, Louverture arrives as both prophet and poet, general and visionary. With striking dramatic technique, Césaire retells the revolution in poignant encounters between rebels and colonial forces, guided by a prophetic chorus and Louverture’s steady ethical and political vision. In the last act, we reach the hero’s betrayal, his imprisonment, and his last stand against the lures of compromise. Césaire’s masterwork is a strikingly beautiful and brutal indictment of colonial cruelty and an unabashed celebration of Black rebellion and victory.

About this title

About the Author

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) was a Martinican poet, critic, essayist, playwright, and statesman; a founder of the Negritude movement; and one of the most influential Francophone Caribbean intellectuals of the twentieth century. He is the author of Journal of a Homecoming / Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, also published by Duke University Press.
 
Alex Gil is Senior Lecturer II and Associate Research Faculty of Digital Humanities in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University.
 
Brent Hayes Edwards is Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 147803064X
• ISBN 13: 9781478030645
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320