Abstract

[Nomos and Foundational Narrative in Masters of the Dew by Jacques Roumain] Masters of the Dew, by Jacques Roumain, emerges as a foundational narrative that links literature, normativity, and Haiti’s national formation. Working through an interdisciplinary lens, the article shows how the novel reshapes symbols and social practices within a normative register. It argues that Roumain constructs an alternative nomos to that of the state through recurring images of dew, cooperative rituals such as coumbite, communal solidarity, and instituting sacrifices. The qualitative analysis highlights three axes: literature as a generator of norms within fragile institutions; dew as an aesthetic-legal category that articulates the common; and the ambivalence of myths, capable of sustaining solidarity or legitimizing exclusion. Ultimately, the narrative suggests a symbolic refounding of the Haitian nation and offers insights for debates on commons-based constitutionalism and postcolonial political imagination.