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The poems that best demonstrate her abilities and are most often questioned by detractors are those that employ classical themes as well as techniques. In addition to classical and neoclassical techniques, Wheatley applied biblical symbolism to evangelize and to comment on slavery. Her love of virgin America as well as her religious fervor is further suggested by the names of those colonial leaders who signed the attestation that appeared in some copies of Poems on Various Subjects to authenticate and support her work: Another fervent Wheatley supporter was Dr.
Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Wheatley died on March 3, Mary Wheatley and her father died in ; Nathaniel, who had married and moved to England, died in Throughout the lean years of the war and the following depression, the assault of these racial realities was more than her sickly body or aesthetic soul could withstand. A free black, Peters evidently aspired to entrepreneurial and professional greatness. He is purported in various historical records to have called himself Dr. Peters, to have practiced law perhaps as a free-lance advocate for hapless blacks , kept a grocery in Court Street, exchanged trade as a baker and a barber, and applied for a liquor license for a bar.
Described by Merle A. Like many others who scattered throughout the Northeast to avoid the fighting during the Revolutionary War, the Peterses moved temporarily from Boston to Wilmington, Massachusetts, shortly after their marriage.
Richmond points out that economic conditions in the colonies during and after the war were harsh, particularly for free blacks, who were unprepared to compete with whites in a stringent job market. During the first six weeks after their return to Boston, Wheatley stayed with one of Mrs. She was reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe. In a filthy apartment, in an obscure part of the metropolis The woman who had stood honored and respected in the presence of the wise and good She also felt that despite the poor economy, her American audience and certainly her evangelical friends would support a second volume of poetry.
As with Poems on Various Subjects , however, the American populace would not support one of its most noted poets. The first American edition of this book was not published until two years after her death. Of the numerous letters she wrote to national and international political and religious leaders, some two dozen notes and letters are extant. As an exhibition of African intelligence, exploitable by members of the enlightenment movement, by evangelical Christians, and by other abolitionists, she was perhaps recognized even more in England and Europe than in America.
Early 20th-century critics of Black American literature were not very kind to Wheatley because of her supposed lack of concern about slavery. Upon arrival, she was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston, Massachusetts.
She also studied astronomy and geography. At age fourteen, Wheatley began to write poetry, publishing her first poem in It included a forward, signed by John Hancock and other Boston notables—as well as a portrait of Wheatley—all designed to prove that the work was indeed written by a black woman.
Phillis Wheatley was one of the best-known poets in preth century America. Wheatley, purchased “a slender, frail female child for a trifle” because the. Phillis Wheatley, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. – December 5, ) was the first published African-American female poet. . Wheatley believed that the power of poetry is immeasurable. John C. Shields . The Black Aesthetic Unbound: Theorizing the Dilemma of Eighteenth-century African American Literature.
She was emancipated her shortly thereafter. Pride in her African heritage was also evident. Her writing style embraced the elegy, likely from her African roots, where it was the role of girls to sing and perform funeral dirges. Religion was also a key influence, and it led Protestants in America and England to enjoy her work. She wrote several letters to ministers and others on liberty and freedom.
During the peak of her writing career, she wrote a well-received poem praising the appointment of George Washington as the commander of the Continental Army. Her husband John Peters was improvident, and imprisoned for debt in , leaving an impoverished Wheatley with a sickly infant son. She went to work as a scullery maid at a boarding house to support them, a kind of domestic labor that she had not been accustomed to, even before becoming a free person. Wheatley died on December 5, , at the age of In Wheatley wrote a poetic tribute to the evangelist George Whitefield , which received widespread acclaim.
Her poetry expressed Christian themes, and many poems were dedicated to famous figures. Over one-third consist of elegies , the remainder being on religious, classical, and abstract themes. One example of a poem on slavery is "On being brought from Africa to America": Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic dye.
Historians have commented on her reluctance to write about slavery. Perhaps it was because she had conflicting feelings about the institution. In the poem above, critics have said that she praises slavery because it brought her to Christianity. But, in another poem, she wrote that slavery was a cruel fate.
Many colonists found it difficult to believe that an African slave was writing "excellent" poetry. Wheatley had to defend her authorship of her poetry in court in They concluded she had written the poems ascribed to her and signed an attestation , which was included in the preface of her book of collected works: Publishers in Boston had declined to publish it, but her work was of great interest in London.
Her poetry received comment in The London Magazine In , which published as a "specimen" of her work, her poem 'Hymn to the Morning', and said: Hammon wrote this poem while Hammon's owner, Lloyd, had temporarily moved himself and the slaves he owned to Hartford, Connecticut , during the Revolutionary War. Hammon saw Wheatley as having succumbed to what he believed were pagan influences in her writing, and so the "Address" consisted of twenty-one rhyming quatrains, each accompanied by a related Bible verse, that he thought would compel Wheatley to return to a Christian path in life. Also, Poems by a Slave.
Light, but did not include poems by Horton. Wheatley believed that the power of poetry is immeasurable. Shields notes that her poetry did not simply reflect the literature that she read but was based on her personal ideas and beliefs. Shields writes, "Wheatley had more in mind than simple conformity. It will be shown later that her allusions to the sun god and to the goddess of the morn, always appearing as they do here in close association with her quest for poetic inspiration, are of central importance to her.
The rhyme scheme is ababcc. She used three primary elements: Christianity, classicism, and hierophantic solar worship. As her parents were sun worshipers, it may be why she used so many different words for the sun. For instance, she uses Aurora eight times, "Apollo seven, Phoebus twelve, and Sol twice. He notes that Sun is a homonym for Son, and that Wheatley intended a double reference to Christ.
Shields believes that her use of classicism set her work apart from that of her contemporaries. He writes, "Wheatley's use of classicism distinguishes her work as original and unique and deserves extended treatment. With the publication of Wheatley's book Poems on Various Subjects, she "became the most famous African on the face of the earth.