Les "gouverneurs de la rosée" au miroir des textes

Abstract

The vivid expression “Gouverneurs de la rosée” and title of the romantic masterpiece by Jacques Roumain appears on several occasions in the writer’s earlier work. The study of the different meanings that the author gives in turn to this recurring image taken from Creole and the comparison between the texts where it appears highlight patterns as well as the evolution of the writer’s view of the Haitian peasant masses who have occupied a central part in his work from the nineteen thirties onwards. Thus, the depiction of the “Masters of the Dew” is the reflection of multiple inner tensions and a fine negotiation between writing history and dreaming of a future, between Marxist ideology and anthropological studies, between belonging to a middle-class elite and being supportive of the oppressed people, between political commitment and an aesthetic quest marked by the indigenist movement.