LITR 4231 Early American Literature Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 1

Cassandra Rea

26 March 2014

Phillis Wheatley: The Center of the American Literary Canon

          Throughout this course, I have found it very interesting about how many women writers we have covered thus far. I was captivated as to how much literature we actually got to read that dealt with women writers because I had the notion that women were not predominant writers at all during that point in history. With that in mind, I began to wonder what other women writers seemed to have an impact or place in Early American Literature, and the name that popped into my head was Phillis Wheatley. I remember being introduced to her in my freshman history class in college and I was absolutely amazed by her story despite knowing very little except that she was the first African American woman to get published. The ultimate purpose of my research post is to ask who this remarkable woman was and how she was able to defy the odds during her time.

           My first research came www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/phillis-wheatley which is the Poetry Foundation which has biographies of famous poets. This source gave a great amount of information about how she came to America and how her journey as a poet began. The research explains that she was brought on an African slave ship that docked in Boston Harbor. She was described by a Wheatley relative as “a slender, frail female child and evidently suffering from climate change” (PoetryFoundation.org) when the Wheatley family purchased her. Phillis was very precocious at a very young age and they soon taught her how to read and write. This piece of information stuck out in particular because even though Phillis was labeled as a slave, the Wheatley’s went against the grain and supported her in her academics, which was very uncommon at the time (1770s). Not only did she learn how to read and write, but she also immersed herself in many different books of Literature including the Bible, Ovid, Homer, the Greek and Latin classics of Vergil as well as others. After learning this about her, it really showed how intelligent she was by reading some heavy Literature for such a young girl who was around ten or eleven at the time. This source in particular was informative because it gave depth to her early life when she came to the Wheatleys as well as her intellectual capability at such a young age.

          The second source as well as the rest my sources all came from the literary database through the university. I found what is called a Legacy Profile through the JSTOR database that focused around her success as a writer. According to this source, Phillis’s first gain at success was when she published an elegy “On the Death of Rev. George Whitefield” in 1770 at the age of fourteen. Not only was this elegy a hit for Boston but it also “drew the attention of London audiences” as well (Levernier 67). This part of my source spoke volumes about Phillis because not only was it an elegy, but it was also about someone that was extremely popular in the Methodist movement. Phillis’s only published book of a collection of poems was not easy to get published because she faced lots of negative criticism from Bostonians because she was black and a slave. Thus, Mrs. Wheatley took it upon herself to send the Whitefield poem to Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntington, who would ultimately be the one to see that Phillis was published. Phillis was only eighteen at the time that her book was sold. Her book received excellent reviews and was praised by several dignitaries including Benjamin Franklin. Through this source, I was able to understand exactly how she was able to defeat the odds about getting her work published as well as the support that the Wheatleys gave her.

          My last two sources focused on how Phillis is perceived in the literary world. Between the two sources, they are very different. Applegate argues that Phillis is only “a minor poet to American literature” (Applegate 126) and Brekus argues that Phillis “faced skepticism about her ability to write such sophisticated verse” (Brekus 494). Applegate approaches Wheatley through her technique, such as her verse “is overly imitated” (Applegate 125) and finds what is wrong within her poetry and how she catered to the dominant culture instead of her own. Applegate ultimately sees Wheatley as “being remembered simply as an oddity of eighteenth century” (Applegate 125). This was the first source that I had seen that had painted Phillis in a not-so-pretty picture as well as diminishing her talent and place in American Literature. Brekus on the other hand describes the skepticism that Wheatley faced as a poet of the eighteenth century. She states that “no other female author in early American faced the same degrees of skepticism or hostility” (Brekus 494). Brekus also further explains how religion greatly influenced her poetry. Each of these sources allowed me to see that Phillis is seen in many different lights as a poet.

          Through this research, it has become evident that Phillis stood the test of time. She defied all the odds from being a slave as well as being a woman to accomplish the title of being the first African American woman to be published in America. Phillis showed immense potential that her owners nurtured and guided her into becoming successful. Despite having only one published book of poetry, she has truly left her mark in the world. Despite being criticized negatively and positively, it just goes to show the Phillis Wheatley is a widespread topic of conversation within the literary world. Even though some may think she is praised more than she should be, Phillis Wheatley is an icon in the literary world based not only on her form in her poetry but also how she incorporated so many aspects of her religion. She is truly the center of the literary canon that no one can argue with.

Works Cited

Applegate, Anne. "Phillis Wheatley: Her Critics and her Contribution." Negro American Literature Forum 9.4 (1975): 123-126. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar 2014.  

Brekus, Catherine A. "Writing Religious Experience: Women's Authorship In Early America." Journal Of Religion 92.4 (2012): 482-497. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.

Levernier, James. "Phillis Wheatley." Legacy 13.1 (1196): 65-75. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar 2014.

The Poetry Foundation. www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/phillis-wheatley