Phillis Wheatley

Issues:

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Questions:

1.) Study Scipio Moorhead's engraving of Phillis Wheatley on page 504, which served as the frontispiece to her collection Poems on Various Subjects(1773). Consider the details of Wheatley's expression, dress, and physical position and characterize the impression the portrait would have made on an eighteenth-century reader. Select one of the poems included in this anthology and discuss the ways that the Phillis Wheatley of Moorhead's portrait is present or absent.

2.) Read "On Being Brought from Africa to America" as an example of dual cultural identity. Poet and critic Naomi Long Madgett has argued that images of light and dark and the ambiguity of the last two lines suggest that this poem isn't as accepting of Western culture and the speaker's position in it as it seems on a first reading. Do you agree? Why or why not?

3.) Using Wheatley's letter to Samson Occom and the poem "To S. M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works," what argument do you think her poetry made to its eighteenth-century audience about African Americans?

4.) Poems such as "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth," "To the University of Cambridge, in New England," and "To His Excellency General Washington" use seemingly unusual subjects for a young African American woman. Choose one of these works and discuss how Wheatley provides a fresh perspective on her subject.

5.) Discuss Wheatley's poem "A Farewell to America. To Mrs. S.W.," written on the occasion of the poet's voyage to England. Characterize Wheatley's treatment of her mistress and her adopted land throughout the poem.