Acknowledgements

Parts of the following essays have already appeared, either in French or in English, in reviews whose editors have kindly permitted their inclusion. My gratitude goes to the Caribbean Review, for permission to include material from "The Originality of the Haitian Novel" and "Slavery and Race in Haitian Letters" ; to Études littéraires for permission to include material translated from "Les États-Unis et les Américains dans les lettres haïtiennes" ; to Présence africaine for permission to include material translated from "L'image de la femme dans la poésie haitienne" and to Conjonction, for permission to include material translated from "En marge de Stella."

Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from Princeton University's Program in Latin American Studies have enabled me to make several trips to Haiti, where I have worked mostly in the Collège Saint Louis de Gonzague Collection. I am grateful to its curator, frère Constant, for his unstinting assistance and suggestions. Maureen Johnson has labored long and hard to read my English prose of infestations of Gallicisms.