Spirit of Nationalism Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784)

• Ask students to read some passages from poems by Alexander Pope, the English poet who served as one of Wheatley’s most important literary models (stanzas from An Essay on Man or Imitations of Horace would work well). Help them to analyze the construction of the heroic couplets Pope employed–that is, two sequential, rhymed lines in iambic pentameter–and ask them to pay attention to his ability to achieve rhythmic variety even while strictly adhering to this rigid metrical form. Have them then turn to Wheatley’s poetry. Ask them to consider to what extent her work was influenced by Pope. How do the meter, rhythm, and thematic concerns of Wheatley’s poetry both derive from and differ from Pope’s model?
• Wheatley made two revisions to her poem “To the University of Cambridge, in New England.” Originally, the fourth line described Africa as “The sable land of error’s darkest night,” referring to what Wheatley perceived as the continent’s paganism. The poem then went on to request the students at Harvard to “suppress the sable monster in its growth.” In her revisions for the 1773 volume, Wheatley deleted the word “sable” from both lines, changing line 4 to “The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom,” and altering line 28 to read “Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg.” Provide students with a handout that delineates the revisions Wheatley made to her poem and ask them to think about the significance of her deletion of the word “sable.” You might have them look up the etymology of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary in order to provide them with a clearer understanding of the connotations that “sable” would have held for eighteenth-century readers.

1. Comprehension: Examine the engraving of Phillis Wheatley that appeared in the 1773 edition of her Poems (reproduced in the archive). How does the portrait depict Wheatley? Why do you think her British publishers would have printed this picture of Wheatley, along with the caption describing her as the “negro servant of Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston” in the first edition of her book?
2. Context: In “To His Excellency General Washington,” Wheatley refers to America as “Columbia”–a feminized personification of the “land Columbus found.” While this designation of America as “Columbia” became commonplace in the years following the Revolution, Wheatley’s use of the term marks its first-known appearance in print. Why might Wheatley have been interested in coining this description of America? How does she describe “Columbia” in her poem? What does the ideal of “Columbia” seem to signify for her? How does Wheatley’s depiction of America as “Columbia” compare to other textual and visual representations of “Columbia”?
3. Context: In his efforts to support his arguments for the racial inferiority of black people in Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson famously dismissed the artistic merit of Wheatley’s poetry: “Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately [sic]; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.” Why do you think Jefferson felt compelled to denounce Wheatley in this way? What is at stake in his refusal to “dignify” her poetry with his criticism?
4. Exploration: Literary and cultural critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. has argued that Phillis Wheatley’s poetry is enormously significant in that it “launched two traditions at once–the black American literary tradition and the black woman’s literary tradition.” How did Wheatley’s poetry influence subsequent African American poets and writers, such as nineteenth-century writers of slave narratives or the poets of the Harlem Renaissance? How does her work deal with issues of gender? How do we reconcile Gates’s claims for her status as a founder with the fact that Wheatley’s work was largely forgotten after her death until abolitionists republished some of her poems in the mid-nineteenth century?

[1235] Ezekial Russell, Poem by Phillis, A Negro Girl [of] Boston, on the Death of the Reverend George Whitefield (1770),
courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Woodcut from the frontispiece of Wheatley’s poem. An evangelical Christian, Phillis Wheatley drew heavily on religious themes for her work.

[1239] Phillis Wheatley, Frontispiece to Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773),
courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Wheatley was a respected poet in the late eighteenth century. Her work was resurrected by abolitionists just before the Civil War.

[1240] Phillis Wheatley, To the Rev. Mr. Pitkin, on the Death of His Lady. [Signed] Phillis Wheatley, Boston, June 16th, 1772,
courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Wheatley was greatly influenced by English poets such as John Milton and Alexander Pope. Her ability to master some of the conventions of their difficult styles was itself a form of protest against slavery.

[1241] Phillis Wheatley, A Letter from Phillis Wheatley to Dear Obour. Dated Boston, March 21, 1774,
courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Although Wheatley received great acclaim for her poetry, she was not able to find funding for her work after the death of her mistress, and she died in poverty.

[2734] David Bustill Bowser, Rather Die Freemen than Live to Be Slaves–3rd United States Colored Troops (c. 1865),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-23098].
This regimental flag shows an African American soldier standing next to Columbia. Due to pressure on both the War Department and President Lincoln, black soldiers began serving in the Union Army beginning in 1863.

[6551] Kenyon Cox, Columbia & Cuba–Magazine cover–Nude Study (1898),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-68463].
An allegorical cover of an 1898 magazine, exemplifying the openness toward the human body of the late-nineteenth-century realists. The names of the women, “Columbia” and “Cuba,” refer to the relationship of the nations during the Spanish-American War.

[7388] Scipio Moorhead, Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston (1773),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC USZC4-5316].
Engraving of Wheatley seated at a desk, which appeared as an illustration in the 1773 edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By the age of fourteen, Wheatley had already published her first poem and was well on her way to publishing Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, which she traveled to Europe to promote.

[9019] Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733),
courtesy of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition.
The first stanza of Pope’s Essay on Man. Phillis Wheatley emulated Pope’s neoclassical style. Her mastery of this difficult meter was a form of protest against slavery.

[9020] Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, from The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. With Life. (c. 1886),
courtesy of T. Y. Crowell & Co.
The first two stanzas from Pope’s “Imitations of Horace.” Phillis Wheatley drew heavily on Pope’s prosody, including his use of heroic couplets.

[9048] Deacon George Thomas, Figurehead of America (2002),
courtesy of Claire Dennerlein and Paul Manson.
Plaque on side of statue reads: “This figurehead is from the clipper ship “America’ built in 1874 at Quincy, Massachusetts, by Deacon George Thomas. In 1887 she was put on the Pacific coasting trade and was wrecked on San Juan Island in 1914.” Seattle businessman and former mayor Robert Moran erected the figurehead at his resort in 1916 to commemorate the dying era of great shipbuilding in America.