We have a slave that is going to fight against her bonds of slavery
through a different strategy and the strategy that we saw in Olaude
Equiano. In the case of Olaude Equiano, we saw that a slave narrative was
the way that his bonding was fought against and as an inspirational element
for other slaves to not only follow in his footsteps, but also to be able
to seek their own freedom and tell it to other slaves. And we read about
the enormous amount of slave narratives that sprinkled American literature
in this early period and that went on until the very beginning of the Civil
War. The American Civil War is a turning point where slavery takes a
different direction and in the case of Phyllis Wheatley, we're going to see
how another type of artist, a poet, uses poetry with a clearly subversive
message as underlying the initial reading. We're going to have two ways of
reading Phyllis Wheatley. One straightforward way, the way that we could
understand the poem itself and then we're going to try to read between the
lines. This is going to be a work of interpretation coming to the
conclusions of why the diction, the choice of words in the case of Phyllis
Wheatley, One of the key aspects that we can walk away with is her diction,
her particular diction and her subversive message. There was always a
subversive underlying message. Okay, so if we go to the study guide for
American literature and we open it in Unit 8, we're going to see that in
the case of Phyllis Wheatley, she is an author where the first element that
is going to stand out is her superior poetic training, her superior poetic
talent. She's going to directly feed from the sources of neoclassicism. Her
poems have all the aesthetic principles of neoclassicism. This is order,
objectivity, formality, balance, a supposed simplicity, restraints and a
careful managing of the technical skills. Phyllis Wheatley's poetry tries
to work in the light of two of her biggest influences. One is Alexander
Pope's poetry and the other one is the famous John Milton that you're
probably reading in another subject about John Milton or you will in the
following weeks or months to come, because I think it's in the same course.
You study Paradise Lost in this course or you already did last year? Last
year, okay. Right because this used to be a first-year subject and now it's
a second-year subject and it has always been a first-year subject. Okay, so
well in any case even better. You already have the knowledge, the expertise
in most of the cases because you've taken that subject to understand that
there is going to be two different types of influence in the case of
Alexander Pope. The heroic couplet, okay so it's a rhyme verse. And in the
case of John Milton, the blank verse. The blank verse is going to be the
president to the free verse poets that will come to know over the 19th
century. If we continue with the presentation, today there's going to be a
lot of reading. We're going to go over all the poems that are part of what
we have to read for this unit. We want to understand the historical
significance that this poet had in particular. Despite her short-lived
life, I want you to pay attention to her lifespan. Her lifespan only
occupies 31 years. That means that she got a lot of things done before the
tragic age of her demise. Her demise is also a cautionary tale. It works as
a cautionary tale to the difficulties of being a freed person. We know that
Olaudah Equiano fled, well he didn't flee exactly but he exiled himself
from America and settled in London due to the terrible racism that he
perceived in American society. Phyllis Wheatley was freed from the bonds of
slavery by her owners, by her family because she had a connection with the
owners that was very close to familiar. That only led her to being poor and
destitute and die at a very early age after suffering various miscarriages.
Not only was her life as a free person not better than her life as a slave,
it was so bad that it led to her death. Directly connected to the
circumstances of anybody that was freed from the bonds of slavery. One
thing is to grant freedom or allow someone to pay for their freedom and the
other one is for the person to be accepted socially by society. Two
different things and they did not work as smoothly as she would have
wished. Other topics that we want to explore in this unit is focus on the
specific literary work of Phyllis Wheatley. She was so talented that most
of the racist or supremacist or at least disdainful members of the higher
society did not believe that she could write those verses that she wrote
for various reasons. She was a woman, she was black, she was a slave. All
of the elements that went against the nature of what it took to be a
writer, what it took to have sufficient talent to write. She was even
examined in front of a board to make sure that her poems were hers. To
certify that her poems were hers and her work, I don't know where I wrote
it, did I write it anywhere? Her 1773 work, which pursues four years, the
Declaration of Independence, is called Poems on Various Subjects. Religious
and Moral had a certification that the poems were actually hers. What are
we going to see if we compare? And here we're doing again this exercise of
comparing and contrasting two authors. What's going to happen if we compare
and contrast Phyllis Wheatley to, for example, Olaudah Equiano? We're going
to see one slave that is very proud of the outcome of his life and he has,
remember the frontispiece of Equiano. He's challenging, he's very brave,
he's looking directly at the reader. And if you have a look at Phyllis
Wheatley's frontispiece, which is also available in the book, you will see
a woman that is timid, looking to the side, not challenging. She doesn't
seem to be a threat. And that was her entire leitmotiv as a writer. She did
not want to be perceived as a threatening person by the reader or by the
people she interacted with. She wanted to get her way through a very subtle
criticism that was low-key and between the lines. So she is not openly
confrontational. She tries to keep a very low-key type of appearance and to
convey her criticism through a subversive and sometimes implicit criticism
that you have to interpret reading her poetry. She was famous for many
elements and one of them is for writing a poem to George Washington that
received her in his quarters and had a conversation with her. And this is
the first interaction that we're going to see of an American president with
one of the authors, but it's not the only one and that would be really
interesting to compare and contrast if you ever have to talk about, for
example, Nathaniel Hawthorne or Longfellow. They were both friends of a
president and they helped him campaign even. And in the case of Harriet
Beecher Stowe, her work was so deeply impacting and so divisive for society
that it's considered one of the triggers of the American Civil War. And she
was famously received by Abraham Lincoln with the words, so you are the
little woman that wrote that book that started this great war. So as we can
see, this is just one of the instances where the proximity of power and
literature are very close hand in hand. We've already gone through Benjamin
Franklin. Benjamin Franklin is one of the founding fathers. He has a direct
relationship with, of course, all of the cabinet members of the first
American governments, George Washington, Jefferson, such and such. So it is
really interesting to see also this interaction with power. If you ever
have to talk about it or if it comes to the light because it's an
interesting topic, you could use those four authors as clear examples of
interaction with American republic power. So if you go even further back,
remember that William Bradford was a governor. Captain John Smith was for a
very brief tenure also a governor. And for example, was it Mary Rowlandson?
Mary Rowlandson was married to one of the governors I think. Yes. So all of
this proximity to power makes a lot of sense because despite what you can
think nowadays, because the circle of people that could actually read and
that had time to think about literature was not that great. Literacy was
one of the big problems of America. And it remained so for a very long
time. It was absolutely unusual to be not part of the upper dominating
class and to be literate. Examples of that, well, for example, we have
Benjamin Franklin who taught himself how to read. And he taught himself in
a very explicit manner. In the case of Phyllis Wheatley, Phyllis Wheatley
had absolutely no business knowing how to read or write. What led her to
being able to read or write? Her fragile physique. So her physique that
normally works against a slave when they are enslaved. The worse your
physique is, the less useful you are as a slave and therefore the worse
your possible destination is. In the case of Phyllis Wheatley, it was a
blessing in disguise because she was brought to the house as a handmaid.
But she proved to be so delicate that she couldn't even work as a handmaid
and she ended up just being another member of the family that was educated
with the same tutors that the Wheatley children had. Phyllis Wheatley
embraces, is probably the example of the first slave that is treated almost
as an adoptive child. And this is something that we have to tread very
carefully because of course she was a slave, of course she was enslaved
until a certain age, but at the same time there are so many clear
references of a distinct endearment towards Phyllis Wheatley and she was
much more than only a slave. For the Wheatley family, she was treated with
the interest and with the care of a daughter. She was taken to England when
her health improved. Her brothers or her sister and her brother or the
other Wheatley children helped her publish her books. But after she was
liberated and she was freed, in that case there is an estrangement with her
family. So there are too many question marks around the Wheatley biography
to fully understand what situation happened. So there are a lot of things
about the Wheatley biography that will always remain a question mark. And
it's very difficult that there is going to be anything shedding some light
on that issue anytime soon. Phyllis Wheatley, where does the name come
from? Wheatley is a family name of the slave owners. Phyllis is the name of
the schooner and she arrived to America on. She didn't spend any time
naming or baptizing or treating children with sufficient respect as to put
them a simple name. She was kidnapped as a child and she was sold to the
Wheatley family with the expectation of being a handmaid for their mother.
This is an intrinsic merit of Wheatley's work. We're going to analyze the
importance of both, the historical reach of Wheatley's work, how she wrote
in the times of enlightenment and she was recognized and well known by
circles of the most influential people in the cultural circles of England.
She was well known by the circles of power that surrounded the American
Revolution and she also embraced very, very passionately a type of religion
that is very, very specific to Phyllis Wheatley's work. We don't see it so
much through the eyes of Puritanism. It doesn't resemble that Puritanism
that we are reminded of every time that we read Anne Bradford or we read
Mary Rowlandson or we read William Bradford, very evangelical, very
biblical. What we see is a type of religious writing that reminds us to the
poets, to the English poets that include religion in their work very
specifically like for example John Milton or Alexander Pope, two of her
biggest poetic references. We're going to see how Wheatley always manages
to put in the forefront but without giving her own opinion or without
giving a narrative forefront to anything, ethical questions that undermine
the discourse of slavery. Her subversiveness is always going to go in favor
of abolitionism. There's unintentional ambiguity in her work and she
arrives to this ambiguity through irony that connects us again to the
Benjamin Franklin's, I would not say to Jonathan Edwards but in the future
when we read other poets, we're going to see other poets that work with
that irony. There's a bit of irony in Anne Bradford's works but I would not
say that Anne Bradford's works are specifically ironic. She had a very deep
understanding of the Bible and she understood first and foremost that she
was closer to the origins of the Bible physically than any white person
that lived in America. Her own Africanness was living proof that she was
close enough to Palestine or to Israel allowing her to talk with an
authoritative voice about religion and with a higher degree of authority
than any Western European migrated to America in the 16th and 17th century.
Instead of using Africa as a land of paganism, she used Africa as a land of
two sides. One side mysterious pagan and unknown and the other the setting
for some of the passages of the Bible and reminding everyone that the color
of the skin is not the color of the soul. And working with that duality of
black and white which is so frequent in religious terminology and moral
terminology to dub black as bad and white as good. In this case she
subverted those paradigms and she used this duality in a subversive manner.
We're going to see that the most important theme in Wheatley's work is of
course liberty, in every sense. Religious liberty, physical liberty,
spiritual liberty. All of the dimensions of liberty are going to be her
leitmotif. Well, we're going to give a few facts about her biography. She
comes from the western part of Africa of what is now Senegal, very close to
Equatorial Guinea if you're more familiar with that on the map at the age
of around seven or eight. She was brought to a territory that is not
classically a slave territory. She was brought to Boston which is a
territory where the wealthy, the rich, the governing class, the merchants
lived. So it wasn't as common for a slave to be taken to an area that was
not particularly in favor of slavery, quite the opposite. Instead of to the
slave territories of the south where slavery was not even an option, it was
a standard de facto lifestyle. Her first name comes from the schooner on
which she arrives to Boston called the Phyllis. She was brought to the
family to become Mr. Wheatley's wife, Susana, her personal servant and
attendant. And the Wheatley twin brothers, Nathaniel and Mary were brought
up alongside Phyllis Wheatley because she could hardly do any housework.
She had very frail health and she received, despite being a slave, she
received a better education than most white people in America which is an
absolute paradigm. And even more, of course, if education was anything, it
was something exclusive normally only to men. For both brothers to be
educated in an identical manner, Mary and Nathaniel speaks a lot about the
forward thinking mentality of the parents for the time, of course. It
wouldn't hold to say that those people are forward thinking nowadays, but
for the time they were extremely forward thinking. They believed in an
equal education for their son Nathaniel and for their daughter Mary. They
had a slave that could not do slave work so they decided to give her an
education which seems an amazing step to take especially when we know that
there is always this connection that maybe before studying this course you
haven't realized, between literacy, embracing religion and having all the
tools necessary to become a free person. In 1771, that is two years before
publishing, she became a baptized member of the old congregational church
and she piously attended regular church service. So imagine, a religious
lady that is actually a slave but behaves as the most well-educated, most
pious, most talented woman of the city, of the state, of the country.
Imagine how surprising and how subversive that is as a fact in that time
where blacks and whites are never seen on equal terms. There is always this
supremacism in favor of the white population. She learned Latin and Greek,
gaining access to the classics. This reminds us directly to William
Bradford, this amount of knowledge. She studied theology, philosophy,
astronomy, geography and history. Wheatley's life was an anomaly among
blacks. She published in Life and married a free man, another black person
but a free man. She married a free African-American from Boston, John
Peters. She had three children but all of them died in infancy. So the
amount of sadness that surrounded her life as a married person must have
been absolutely unbearable. At the age of 31, she had already had three of
her infant children die. She was in the most absolute poverty when she died
at the age of 31 in 1784. So let's talk about this abolitionist movement
that we've come to understand through Olaudah Equiano and through Phyllis
Wheatley and that we're going to further lengthen our understanding of it
when we deal with Frederick Douglass. Wheatley championed the cause of
abolitionism in a very subtle way. It wasn't a direct way of embracing
abolitionism. It was an indirect way between the line messages sent by her
poems. She used her literary talent to turn the principles of American
Enlightenment against itself. So she worked as a counterintelligence spy in
the Enlightenment movement. She brought the contradictions of American
Enlightenment against itself. She was intensely aware of political stakes
and she was also aware of the power of rhetoric and of language. She
understood that language could take you far and could do maybe more than
many guns. But she also understood everything that was happening in America
and decided to take sides and ally with the American rebels that were
revolting against England and that were pursuing to become a free state.
When she writes, she always has two topics that she desires to link as many
times as possible. Christianity on the one hand and freedom. They're
portrayed in contrast in order to expose a contradiction of racist
Christians making them all the more evident. So she uses Christianity and
the concept of freedom to expose as an expose against the Christians of the
time to say, why are you living in contradiction with your faith? That is
basically the underlying message. Passages of the Bible are interrupted at
the time. Sorry, interpreted. I think I'm a bit tired today because I'm
misreading a few words. Passages of the Bible are interpreted at the time
in a fundamentalist way to provide peace of mind to slaveholders. We
already talked about fundamentalism. We said that Puritanism was extremely
fundamentalist because it did not search for the salvation of mankind. It
served the purpose of seeking the salvation of the Puritans. And from that
point of view, what this young America or this rebel America on its road to
independence had decided to do was embrace any story that could hold
against having a feeling that you belong to a racist country. There was
nothing personal about slavery, only business. So it wasn't against the
person. There is this attempt of creating a narrative that served the
purpose of slave owners, but at the same time there was a counter-narrative
denouncing slavery and putting it in contradiction with the values of the
American Republic of the American Revolution. The same people that praised
Weasley's talent saw her as a threat for white supremacism. So she was
praised, but at the same time she was censored because she was believed to
be a dangerous vector for the American landscape. Before we start reading
the poems, we're going to talk about the entire body of work of Phyllis
Wheatley. Of course she's tremendously celebrated by African American
literature, which is a way we normally call black literature in America.
She's recognized as one of America's first black poets. She wrote her first
poem at the age of 13. She had the added discrimination, what we were
saying before. Not only was it her race, it was her gender and it was the
alienation that she had felt being brought from a different country to this
country that neither loved her nor let her do anything like loving. The
problem, one of the biggest problems with racism and slavery was that it
imposed, pre-judged people, pre-sentenced people and put them in a state
where they were absolutely defenseless. Her book called Poems on Various
Subjects Religious and Moral has this collection of poems, has 39 poems and
it was the first full-length book published by an African American poet.
Her education, incredibly deep, incredibly detailed besides the amount of
time that she spent reading or writing allowed her to learn Latin and
Greek. We already talked about that, so she could evaluate and enjoy the
classics in their own language. Her talent was so outstanding for the time
that she was examined or evaluated by a committee of 18 Bostonians to make
sure that her poems were actually hers. Three of her poems have
unfortunately been lost after her death. We know there are three poems, but
we have never had them in anybody's hand. Her style, if you have to use one
word to evaluate her style, religious. But under the religiousness, you
need to have more space to write. You have to have space to say that it's
religious within a neoclassical framework and that it drinks directly from
the inspiration sources of John Milton, Alexander Pope, and Thomas Gray.
Her subversiveness has a specific pattern which is intentional ambiguity
and verbal irony. If we read from the book, the first poem that we're going
to read is On Being Brought From Africa To America. The title of these
poems are normally extremely self-explanatory but what I would ask you to
do is read this poem for a second and we'll start analyzing it. I'm going
to look for it in Professor Girard's book and I'll read it as we go, and
maybe you want to comment on it. Okay, the frontispiece that I was
mentioning before is on page 126 of the textbook. It shows Phyllis Wheatley
in a pensive mode looking at the sky for inspiration or looking at the
ceiling for inspiration and trying to endure doing her work while there is
a guitar close by that seems to be distracting her or something. The
inscription around the oval seems to read Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant
To Mr. John Wheatley Of Boston A Negro Servant, so she is in her own
frontispiece subservient. She has this pensive mode where she seems to be
looking for inspiration or looking for a source of inspiration. And I think
it contrasts very starkly with Olaudah Equiano's picture on page 108 where
we see a proud Negro that has self-named himself Gustavus Vassa, the
African, as if it were the title of a king or something similar opposed to
Phyllis Wheatley that is someone that you have to know through her
affiliation to John Wheatley Of Boston. So as you can read in her extended
biography and you should read despite the fact that I go through a summary
when we're here you should read the details because it does seem very
interesting when Wheatley, for example, stayed in England and she was
gifted with a translation of Don Quixote or a copy of Milton's Paradise
Lost and she was able to purchase the complete works of Alexander Polk. The
thing that a Negro slave would have money, be able to spend the money have
the permission to spend the money and spend it on a book that costs nothing
less than five guineas, small fortune for the time is just outstanding. The
fact that she could afford to lead that lifestyle. When we talk about being
brought from Africa to America I'm going to read from the book on page 130.
She says, Professor Tvex says This short poem, probably written in 1768 and
revised for the London volume of 1773 has sometimes been cited as an
instance of Wheatley's denigration of her native African homeland and her
alleged full acceptance of dominant discourses in colonial Boston. As you
can see, there is an example. The first reading of a poem by Wheatley would
make you think the opposite of what she probably wanted to mean. So there
we have the perfect example. We have one message and the subversive
underlying message. You have the poem here, we're going to read it. It's an
eight verse poem with heroic couplets. As you can see there is a two by two
rhyming pattern that imitates the rhyming pattern of Alexander Polk.
Something unusual, or at least not extremely frequent in Phyllis Wheatley
is the length of the poem. This poem is short considering the standard of
Wheatley. Readers will perceive upon closer examination that there are
certain stylistic strategies that undermine such discourses by conveying
her message subversively. It is important to note the difference in tone
and content between the first four lines and the second half of the poem.
So there is one reality that arrives until the new and there's another
reality that goes on until the ending word train. In the first quatrain the
poet expresses her gratitude for being introduced to Christianity and
assumes a non-threatening tone by using the confessional voice that would
attract her genteel audience. Confessional tone, key word, key expression
to refer to Phyllis Wheatley's style, confessional tone. Then without
transition in the second quatrain the author suddenly adopts an accusatory
tone that abruptly reverses the movement of the poem. She makes a direct
challenge to racial prejudice through an allusion to injustice in line
five. Some view our sable race with scornful eye which is morally censurous
of those who show contempt for blacks because of the color of their skins.
The term scornful is used here to qualify those who despise blacks just as
scorn is a main characteristic ascribed to those who crucified Jesus in the
poem through the University of Cambridge in New England in line 15. Line
six appears in quotes recorded as an actual comment made by those who
thought that black was the color of the devil. Line seven begins with an
imperative. Remember, just the idea that a slave is daring to refer to the
reader with an imperative voice is very amazing. It's amazing that she
would have the audacity to try to address her readers with a direct
imperative which is not disguised with any type of modal verb like may you
remember. No, remember. And not only one person the entire Christianity
remember Christians. Negro is black as cane so that idea is really, really
important because again it's playing with that duality of black and white
and the color of the soul and the color of the skin. She commands with an
unmitigated intention what she seems to be air quoting Christians who have
been quoted in the previous line. The last two lines contain a radical
reputation of some 18th century racist notions according to which the souls
of black people were everlastingly doomed. The same way that Puritans had
the feeling that they were the chosen people and everyone else were the
others that would burn in hell this fundamentalist idea applied to all of
Christianity for whites for the majority of the whites salvation was
something predestined for the whites and all of the rest were doomed to not
go to heaven. There was an everlasting doom and when she embraces the idea
that she's going to go to heaven and that she's working on her way of going
to heaven she asserts that black people expect to go to heaven the same way
that white people expect to go to heaven and join the ranks of Jesus
Christ. If Christ's sacrifice the way that Jesus Christ died was sufficient
to reset all of the sins of humanity it serves as a way of resetting the
sin of Cain who is normally considered in biblical in all biblical
representation to be a black and white brotherhood of Abel being white and
Cain being black as already atoned for so Jesus Christ's sacrifice served
to atone for Cain's sin. There is no doubt that salvation can be universal
for everybody for everybody that loves God and everybody that embraces
Christianity. By utilizing the terms Christian Negroes and Cain the poet
links them rhetorically so as to tell her readers that both Christians and
Negroes like Cain are the descendants of Adam and Eve and thus not only
inheritors of the original sin but also equally able to be redeemed or
saved by God. So she's using an almost mathematical or logical conclusion
very similar to the ones that we would find in Aristotle that turned famous
again in the years of enlightenment where through a series of statements
she arrived to a conclusion that was irrefutable. If the Negroes are
supposed to descend from Cain and the Christians are supposed to descend
from Abel both of them descend from Adam and Eve. Both of them have had
their sins redeemed by Jesus Christ who sacrificed in the name of everybody
and both are therefore entitled to salvation in heaven. So all of that
compressed she uses black in a very rich way. Black and Africa. She
sometimes uses it as a way of catching, of trying to gain the confidence of
the white racist reader and then hitting it with a sort of literary Cain
and using Africa in a different way to resemble something that connects it
directly to religion. So as you can see for Phyllis Wheatley all sorts of
freedom are funneled through the gates of heaven. Salvation comes from
heaven, happiness comes from heaven, ultimate liberty comes through heaven.
So to finish off the biblical solution that reinforced Wheatley's
identification with Jews emphasizes their common suffering under bondage.
In Egypt then, in America now. So she compares herself to the type of
suffering that the Israelites had to endure in the hands of the Egyptians.
The last part of the poem contains a pun of the name Cain pronounced like
cane and it can be refined to produce sugar and we all know that the color
of sugar is white. So if you refine cane may be refined black as cane may
be refined to turn it into something white and worthy of going to heaven.
So there is a subversive way of using the pun of Cain as a way of purifying
or looking for purifying. Another pun is the use of the word dye instead of
spelling it as it should with a Y it's spelled as if it were death as a
diabolic dye dye es un tinte diabólico but to spell dye correctly it would
be DYE not DIE to come to that conclusion and emphasizing that pun. So as
you can see there's a lot of word game I've been talking for five or six
minutes about a poem that takes 40 seconds to read so that just goes to
show how deep and how multilayered Phyllis Wheatley's poems are absolutely
contrary to what we had in the case of Ann Bradstreet in most of the cases
what we had was a very straightforward message that was normally in the
line of didactic purpose some of them especially the verses that belong to
the poet to her verses in that term in particular she does play with this
multilayered meaning and it's slightly different On being brought from
Africa to America T'was mercy brought me from my pagan land Taught my
benighted soul To understand Trasnachada, benighted soul Night, black, day,
white again there's a duality That there is a God And there's a Savior too
Once I redemption Neither sought nor knew She said When I was in Africa I
was free To roam But I was not free In my soul Because I did not know about
God and I did not know How to reach salvation But now paradoxically I know
the road To salvation In this life So that's a type of paradigm That she's
creating there Some view our Sable race With scornful eye Sable is another
way Of saying black Their color is a diabolic dye The connection between
The color black And hell and Satan And the devil Remember Christians
Negroes black as cane They join the angelic frame Okay? Very simple in
construction Apparently very, very difficult And very multi-layered In
interpretation To the University of Cambridge In New England Fortunately
the interpretation Is not only that Because we would need Like six or seven
classes To go through Through the entire poetry To the University of
Cambridge In New England The poem was written in 1767 And published in 1773
At a time When Harvard College Located in Cambridge A suburb of Boston Was
often referred to as The University of Cambridge Although a superficial
reading Of this poem would suggest That Phyllis Wheatley Was ashamed of her
blackness And the analysis Of its third stanza Might reveal How subtly she
expressed That she took pride in it The use of the term Ethiop And again,
she's using Words about Africa About the color black And about freedom
Always with a multi-layered Perspective Always with different
Interpretations Sometimes to catch Her attention She uses The term Ethiop
In a very effective disclosure Near the end of the poem It is a positive
illusion Of her racial identification Because within A biblical context It
brings to mind Moses Moses' Ethiopian wife Zipporah The Queen of Sheba
Sheba being an Old Testament Term for Ethiopia And others Ethiopians Noted
for their piety Through the Bible Abed Melek the Ethiopian In Jeremiah 38
and 39 The Ethiopian eunuch In Acts 8, 26-39 The name of Ethiopia Evoked
for the poet's audience In the ancient kingdom Often mentioned in the Bible
Where the word Africa Does not appear Furthermore Ethiopia's blameless race
Had been also honored By Homer As Wheatley learned From Pope's translation
Of the Iliad In 557 Lines 3-6 If extracted from the context Could suggest
that the author Accepted the view That slavery was a positive Institution
since she professes Gratitude for having been Rescued from the dark abodes
Of the land of Ares And the Egyptian gloom So first she says Thank you for
bringing me From that godless territory To your God gracious land Because
now I can Ascend to heaven And now I can be one of you So it's a way of
saying Okay so first you're justifying Slavery but wait a minute You
aren't? So what she tries What she does constantly Is in favor of the
reader But only to attract The reader sufficiently To make the reader be
Ashamed of their behavior Definitely if these If these poems Were addressed
To an audience Of Harvard scholars Of Harvard graduates It would be At
first it would sound Like a tribute Like a homage But afterwards it would
sound As a stark criticism At their face So It continues saying In lines 28
and 30 She points out the paradox Of hypocritical Christians Who profess to
be The messengers of Christ And yet fail to practice What they preach She
implies that they are In serious need Of moral rectification If an African
That is a marginal outsider Without the privileged Educational resources
That the students of Harvard have Feels compelled to admonish them If even
An African slave Can point out That there are Christians That don't behave
like Christians Then how can you Not take into consideration That you do
Consider worthy of being Christians All these sinners And all these people
That don't live according To Christianity She is persuasively telling The
young Harvard men To avoid sin and sloth And to make the most Of their
fortunate positions So she's saying Take this opportunity Embrace the
opportunity That the world is giving them But at the same time Telling them
If you don't take this opportunity It's because you're full of sin And
you're full of sloth The poem is written In blank verse On rhymed iambic
pentameters That is, iambic pentameters Which do not rhyme This is an
evolution From Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet published In 1650 For the
first time And she published Her first poems In 1768 I think Was the first
time So after more than 100 years We finally see Some poetic evolution That
is extremely significant And what we're seeing Is that America poetically
Is able to keep the pace For the rest of the world Because Phyllis
Wheatley's work Is at the vanguard Of what is being done In poetry in other
parts Of the world In the English language So it's worthy Of being praised
As a notable contribution To universal poetry This is one Of the few
exceptions Where she doesn't We're going to see that Rhyme is something
That falls out of use Very quickly In the 19th century And how two
Behemoths of literature Walt Whitman And Emily Dickinson Take poetry by
storm And transform Not only the landscape Of American poetry The landscape
of universal poetry To turn it into A long-lasting influence That reaches
Our current times And how The work of Emily Dickinson And Walt Whitman
Which are direct inheritors Of this poetry and other Poetries that come
afterwards Are going to be relevant For the modernist generation For the
beat generation Even for the postmodernist Generation So it just goes to
show How important poetry is For the universal Balance of things Sometimes
we tend to disdain Because of its presence That poetry In favor of verse
Poetry is very important And this unit is very important To understand it
well Is a very important achievement For you as scholars We're going to
Read the poem In its entirety And Her Her normal imitation Is of Alexander
Pope In this case She tries to emulate John Milton To the University of
Cambridge In New England What I want you to see is Despite not having a
rhyme It does have a rhythm And that's really important Because we're going
to see That rhyme is just one element And many poets Are going to also drop
rhyme But they're not going to drop What the poem means The difficulty of
writing a poem Is not just the difficulty Of finding words that rhyme And
make sense Within a scheme But to be able to present A multifaceted and
complex message In only 30 lines Like in this case To the University of
Cambridge In New England The Muses promised To assist my pen T'was not long
ago Since I left my native shore The land of heirs And Egyptian gloom
Father of mercy T'was thy gracious hand Brought me in safety From those
dark abodes So she's being thankful For being brought out Of ignorance And
into the light Of religion And saying, hey I can sleep with this poem
Because she's accepting That she's a slave But she's being treated fairly
Students to you Again, she does that She's lecturing people That are
socially Incredibly above her And despite holding Such a low station She
dares to address people In a very straightforward mode Students to you Even
to scan the heights Above to traverse The ethereal space And mark the
systems Of revolving world Still more, you sons of science You'll receive
The blissful news By messengers from heaven How Jesus' blood For your
redemption flows See him with hands Outstretched upon the cross In mess
compassion In his bosom grows Mercy in the son of God When the whole human
race By sin has fallen He deigned to die That they might rise again And
share with him In the sublimest skies Life without death And glory without
end So there she talks to them About the sacrifice Of Jesus Christ For all
humanity Not for white humanity For all humanity He does not He does not
resent Whoever scorns him And his mercy Is matchless So the whole human
race Is being saved Through his acts Improve your privilege While they stay
Again, an imperative voice To refer to a group of scholars Your pupils And
each hour redeemed Let sin, that baneful evil To the soul By you be shunned
Nor once remit your guard Suppress the deadly serpent In its egg It's like
kill the sin While it's not born Kill the sin before it happens Suppress
the deadly serpent In its egg That's the core meaning Of this verse Kill
the sin Before it becomes a sin Suppress the deadly serpent In its egg
Before it becomes The serpent of temptation Before it creates Another
situation Of unforgivable sin The same original sin That Adam and Eve
Perpetrated Kill it before It becomes a sin Try to be a better person A
better Christian Your blooming plants Of human race divine So it's a way of
saying That they're young people Within the best Of the best Of the human
race You're the youngest Of the youngest You're the best Of the best So you
hold The most privileged position So yours is the biggest Responsibility
And you Don't blame anyone else Because you're the youngest Of the youngest
You're the brightest Of the brightest An Ethiop tells you Tis your greatest
foe An Ethiop There she's giving herself A biblical tone And advising them
Maybe in a poisonous way That the greatest enemy That they have Is endless
pain Sorry, it's transient Sweetness turns to endless pain And an immense
tradition Sinks the soul Don't embrace sin Because you will never Escape
from it Don't make the same mistakes That so many have made Before you And
be worthy Of the salvation of God So even though At first you could have
She's Forgetting or Objecting from her From her African origin She uses it
in both ways She says Thank you for bringing me Of your land of
religiousness And now let me give you The most important advice In the
world Be worthy Christians And do what you have to do Therefore, don't
Think that you are Sons of God As you are sons of God So it's a subversive
message Without a doubt To his excellency George Washington Penultimate
poem Although Wheatley's political poetry Has generally been ignored Her
skill in adapting And not simply Derivatively handling The conventions Of
neoclassical verse When the author was still living In the Wheatley home
And published both In the Virginia Gazette And in the Pennsylvania Magazine
In 1776 When Thomas Paine Was its editor During the American Revolution
This is like saying That you're on the cover Of Time magazine When
everybody read Time magazine Thomas Paine And his pamphlets Were so, so, so
Influential That they served To change the opinion Of people that were
still Swaying towards The loyalist side To become To embrace The American
Revolution It's because of Thomas Paine Influence that the American
Revolution happened If ever The magazine that was Edited by Thomas Paine
himself Is to be published In the biggest source of influence For the early
American Government Or well, the early American movement Because this was
only A revolutionary movement Wheatley sent the poem To General Washington
With the following letter Sir, I have taken the freedom To address your
excellency In the enclosed poem With the following Accuracies You're being
appointed By the Grand Continental Congress The Grand Continental Congress
Was a self-appointed Body of government That was seditious To the English
Empire So After A few months Of uncertainty General Washington That was an
officer Was appointed Generalissimo Of the American forces He was appointed
Commander-in-Chief A station that to this day Is still held by the
President Of the United States So he is Commander-in-Chief Through this
appointment And as a way of celebrating Phyllis Wheatley writes To him this
poem So historically It's something that you Probably already know Through
Mundos Anglófonos Together with the fame Of your virtues Excite sensations
Not easy to suppress Your generosity therefore I presume will pardon The
attempt Wishing your excellency All possible success In the great cause You
are so generously engaged in I am I am your excellency's Most obediently
Obedient humble servant Phyllis Wheatley Providence October 26, 1775 It is
so unusual for a slave To put Her own life on the line Saying I am at your
Complete disposal As a slave For your worthy movements Of denying The power
and the authority To the government That is supposed to Govern over all of
us It's a very strange situation If you come to think about it The tone of
the poem Adapted to the heroic subject That the author is exalting
Illustrates a shift from The voices Wheatley used In her former statements
Of Christian piety The author here seems To wholly embrace Classicism by
her choice Of the rhetoric of the rebels In the Revolutionary War An aspect
which won her Considerable popularity During this historical period In her
quest for authority Or search for validation She invokes amuses Rather than
relying on The biblical prophets Who had deeply influenced Her previous
writing Here again while evoking The suggestive decorative Neoclassical
imagery She's quoting to irony When referring to America The country that
had Enslaved her And still kept under bondage So many people Of African
descent As the land of the freedom Heaven defended race So she's accepting
The manifest destiny Of the American people She's accepted that The
entirety of America Are now the new chosen people But she calls them Heaven
defended race Which are the guarantees Of freedom Whose freedom And that's
where the paradox is Are the slaves going to be liberated At the end of
this Revolutionary War We know how that went To his excellency General
Washington Celestial choir Enthroned in realms of light Columbia scenes of
glorious toils I write The goddess comes With the best alarms She flosses
dreadful In her folded arms See mother earth Of her offspring's fate bemoan
A nation's gaze At scenes before unknown See the bright beams Of heaven
revolving light Involved in sorrows And the veil of night The goddess comes
She moves divinely fair Olive and laurel At sea's rise Muse bow propitious
While my pen relates How poor her army Is through a thousand gates As when
Aeolus' Heaven's fair faces Deface the forms Enwrapped in tempest And a
night of storms Astonished ocean feels The wild uproar The refluent surges
Beat the sounding shore Or thick as leaves In bright array They seek the
work of war Where high unfurled The ensign Waves in air Shall I to
Washington Their praise recite Enough thou know'st Them in the fields of
fight The first in peace and honors We demand The grace and glory Of thy
martial band Fame for thy valor For thy virtues more We implore One century
scarce Performed its destined Ground When Gallic powers Columbia's fury
found And so may you Whoever dares disgrace The land of freedom's Heaven
defended race Fixed are the eyes Of nations on the scales For in their
hopes Columbia's arms prevail A non-Britannia Columbia was supposed to be
The name of the territory That's why it's present so many times A
non-Britannia It's a way of referring To the old Roman name For Great
Britain Droops the pensive head While round increase The rising hills of
dead Ah cruelness, blindness To Columbia's state Lament thy thirst Of
boundless power too late Proceed great chief A crown, a mansion And a
throne that shine With gold and fading Washington be thine It was the
understanding of everyone That George Washington Was going to be The king
of Columbia But he self-appointed himself As someone that Would only stay
there For two terms And would walk away Something that was not expected by
anyone Let alone the king of England And I think that we're going To wrap
it up there You've got some Some other elements In the presentation The
focus piece of That I was talking about And other elements Audios of all
the poems And I hope that you found Today's lesson Meaningful and
interesting And it helped you shape The final parts of your peck Because I
think that You completed all the contents That you need to wrap up Your
peck and submit it So Godspeed to everyone And get going with the peck And
let me know how it goes Thank you very much Everyone at home And for once
Saved by the bell We're over with the class And next week We're going to
Enter a different realm We're going to enter A really, really interesting
Authors that come From now on Probably one of the most important authors In
terms of relevance and influence Is the author that we have next week
Washington Irvin The father of the short story Probably the biggest
Literary legacy Of American literature To the world So that will be next
week Have a fantastic week everyone Bye