Ministry of higher and secondary specialized education of the republic of uzbekistan state university of world languages english language faculty №1 Course paper Theme: Early black poetry Phyllis Wheatley

1.2. Poetry foundation
Phillis Wheatley Peters was one of the most well-known poets in pre-19th-century America despite being a slave. Wheatley was the abolitionists' illustrative example of how black people could be both artistic and intellectual. She was educated while a slave in the home of prominent Boston businessman John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems, and paraded before the new republic's political leadership and the old empire's aristocracy. The literate colonists knew her name, and the nascent antislavery movement was sparked by her accomplishments. When Wheatley was around seven years old, she was taken from Senegal/Gambia in West Africa. She was brought to the Boston docks along with a shipment of so-called "refugee" slaves who, due to their advanced age or physical fragility, were unfit for hard labor in the West Indian and Southern colonies, the ship's first ports of call after arriving from the Atlantic. Susanna Wheatley, the wife of well-known Boston tailor John Wheatley, bought "a tiny, weak female kid... for a little" in August 1761 because the captain of the slave ship thought the waif was terminally ill and he wanted to make at least a small profit before she passed away.. Later, a Wheatley relative revealed that the family had estimated the girl to be "about seven years old... from the circumstances of shedding her front teeth." The girl was "of slender frame and evidently suffering from a change of climate," nearly naked, with "no other covering than a quantity of dirty carpet about her." The Wheatley family, which included their daughter Mary and son Nathaniel, did not totally release Wheatley from her domestic responsibilities after learning about the girl's precociousness; nevertheless, they did teach her to read and write. She quickly became well-versed in the Greek and Latin classics of Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and Homer as well as the Bible, astronomy, geography, history, and British literature (particularly that of John Milton and Alexander Pope).. Despite this exposure, which was wealthy and unique for an American slave, Wheatley wrote in "To the University of Cambridge in New England" (perhaps her first poem, although not published until 1773), that her spirit ached for the intellectual challenge of a more academic environment. Although it was traditionally accepted that Wheatley's first poem was An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield... (1770), Carl Bridenbaugh revealed in 1969 that Wheatley composed "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin," a poem that appeared in the Newport, Rhode Island, Mercury on December 21, 1767. However, Wheatley's Whitefield elegy is what earned him widespread recognition. The poem was published in conjunction with Ebenezer Pemberton's funeral speech for Whitefield in London in 1771, earning her recognition on a global scale. It was first published as a broadside and a pamphlet in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia. Wheatley, then 18 years old, had amassed a collection of 28 poems by the time she published advertisements for subscribers in Boston newspapers in February 1772 with Mrs. Wheatley's assistance. She and the Wheatleys resorted to London in frustration for a publisher as it seemed that the colonists would not support writing by an African. Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Whitefield had served as chaplain, had received the Whitefield poem from Wheatley. The countess, a wealthy supporter of evangelical and abolitionist movements, gave bookseller Archibald Bell the order to contact Wheatley in order to prepare the book. On May 8, 1771, Wheatley, who had a persistent asthma attack, and Nathaniel departed for London.. The now-famous poetess was received by a number of dignitaries, including Benjamin Franklin, poet and activist Baron George Lyttleton, future Lord Mayor of London Sir Brook Watson, and the Earl of Dartmouth. Bell was disseminating the first edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), the first collection of poetry by an African American published in modern times, as Wheatley was recrossing the Atlantic to reach Mrs. Wheatley, who by the end of the summer had grown gravely ill. Iambic pentameter and heroic couplets were Wheatley's preferred poetry forms, as seen by Poems on Various Subjects.. Elegies, poems on the passing of famous people, acquaintances, or even strangers whose loved ones employed the author, make up more than one-third of her whole oeuvre. The poems that most clearly show off her talent and are frequently criticized by critics are those that use classical subjects and literary devices. She not only translates Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VI, but also adds some of her own lovely lines to the poem to further the dramatic imagery in her epyllion "Niobe in Distress for Her Children Slain by Apollo." She turns Horace's ode into a glorification of Christ in "To Maecenas." Wheatley used biblical symbolism in combination to classical and neoclassical approaches to evangelize and make commentary about slavery. For example, the most well-known Wheatley poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," warns the Great Awakening audience to keep in mind that Africans must be accepted into the Christian stream: "Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, /May be refin'd and join th' celestial train." The remaining topics in Wheatley's work can be categorized as patriotic celebrations of America. In a letter to none other than the first president of the United States, George Washington, who she had corresponded with and subsequently had the honor to see, she was the first to praise our country as lovely "Columbia." The names of the colonial leaders who signed the attestation that appeared in some copies of Poems on Various Subjects to authenticate and support her work—Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts; John Hancock; Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor; James Bowdoin; and Reverend Mather Byles—add further evidence of her love of the unspoiled America and her fervor for religion. Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, was another ardent Wheatley admirer. Three months or so before Mrs. Wheatley's death on March 3, 1774, Wheatley was committed. Although a number of British publications criticized the Wheatleys for keeping Wheatley in slavery while portraying her as the African genius in London, the family had offered the poet a murky refuge. Wheatley had never encountered either the treacherous pressures of slavery or the harsh economic exclusions that were widespread in a life as a free black person. Instead, she was kept in a servant's place, a reasonable distance from the Wheatleys' affluent circles. Wheatley drifted toward this precarious life with the passing of her sponsor. Nathaniel Wheatley, who had married and relocated to England, passed away in 1783. Mary Wheatley and her father passed away in 1778. The Wheatley family had provided the poet with a shady haven, despite the fact that certain British periodicals chastised them for continuing to maintain Wheatley in servitude while promoting her as the African genius in London. Both the perilous strains of slavery and the terrible economic exclusions that were common in a life as a free black person had never been experienced by Wheatley. She was instead housed in a servant's quarters, some distance from the Wheatleys' wealthy social circles. After her sponsor died, Wheatley slid into this unstable existence. In 1783, Nathaniel Wheatley passed away after being married and moving to England. In 1778, Mary Wheatley's father also passed away. "A man of very lovely appearance and manners," who "wore a wig, carried a cane, and completely acted out "the gentleman," as described by Merle A. Richmond, The phrase "a wonderful specimen of his race, being a proficient writer, a ready speaker" was also used to describe Peters. Some writers perceived Peters as "shiftless," haughty, and pompous due to his goals, but as a Black man in a time when only physical strength was valued, Peters's commercial acumen was just unmarketable. The Peterses briefly relocated from Boston to Wilmington, Massachusetts, shortly after being married, joining a large number of other people who dispersed around the Northeast to flee the fighting during the Revolutionary War. Melvin A. Richmond emphasizes how difficult the economic circumstances were in the colonies both before and after the war, especially for free blacks who were ill-equipped to compete with whites in a competitive labor market. The newfound poverty Wheatley Peters experienced in Wilmington and Boston once they eventually returned there may have been caused more by these socioeconomic causes than by any refusal to work on Peters' part. Wheatley Peters was frequently left to fend for herself by working as a charwoman while Peters avoided creditors and looked for work between the years of 1779 and 1783. The couple may have had children between these years (up to three, though the number of children is disputed), and Peters sank further into poverty. Wheatley Peters stayed with one of her nieces in a bombed-out mansion that had been turned into a day school after the war for the first six weeks following their arrival in Boston. After that, Peters relocated them to a dilapidated apartment in Boston, where additional Wheatley kin soon discovered a sick and destitute Wheatley Peters. "She was herself suffering for want of care, for numerous comforts, and that best of all comforts in sickness," Margaretta Matilda Odell recalled. She was reduced to a state that is too disgusting to explain. The woman who had been recognized and admired in the presence of the wise and good... now counting the hours till death in a state of the most utter agony, surrounded by all the symbols of a wretched poverty, in a filthy apartment, in a remote area of the city! Unattended and alone herself, Phillis Wheatley Peters passed away. John Peters was imprisoned when wife passed away on December 5, 1784, "forced to relieve himself of obligation by an imprisonment in the county jail," as Richmond concludes with plenty of proof. As Odell reported, "A grandniece of Phillis' benefactress, coming along Court Street, met the funeral of an adult and a kid: a bystander informed her that they were taking Phillis Wheatley to that silent home." Their final surviving child passed away in time to be buried beside his mother. Wheatley Peters may have written 145 poems, according to recent scholarship, the majority of which would have been published if the donors she begged for had come forward to support the second volume. However, this artistic legacy is now lost and was likely given up during Peters's search for survival after she passed away. There are over two dozen notes and letters that she wrote to political and religious leaders at the national and international levels. She was likely more well-known in England and Europe than in America as an example of African brilliance that could be used by abolitionists, evangelical Christians, and members of the enlightenment movement.. Due to her alleged lack of concern for slavery, early 20th-century reviewers of Black American literature were not very kind to Wheatley Peters. She did, however, have something to say about the institution of slavery, and she did it in front of the institutional church, which was the most powerful group in 18th-century society. The Bible and 18th-century evangelical Christianity were two of Phillis Wheatley Peter's biggest sources of inspiration for her poetry and ideas, but up until quite recently, her detractors did not view her use of biblical allusion or its symbolic application as a protest against slavery. She frequently used direct biblical language intended to inspire churchgoers to take action. For instance, she criticizes Christian patriots who mistreat their people in these strong words in her poetic tribute to General David Wooster: But how presumptuous should we aspire to achieve Divine approbation with the Almighty mind
While they are still being ungenerous, they defame and enslave the blameless people of Africa.
Once goodness has prevailed, grant our prayers that triumph may be ours and gracious freedom theirs.
She also compares American slavery to that of ancient, pagan Egypt in an angry letter to the Reverend Samson Occom that was written after Wheatley Peters was set free and widely circulated in Boston newspapers in 1774: "If God hadn't implanted a principle in every human breast that we call love of freedom, it would have been impatient with oppression and pining for deliverance, and by the leave of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that the same Principle lives in us. Otherwise, perhaps the Israelites would have been less concerned about their freedom from Egyptian slavery. I don't say they would have been content without it, by any Means. In the last ten years, Wheatley historians have discovered poetry, letters, and other information concerning her life and her connections to Black abolitionists in the eighteenth century. Additionally, they have documented her significant usage of classicism and explained how her biblical connections serve sociological purposes. All of this analysis and research has demonstrated Wheatley Peter's contempt for the system of slavery and her use of artistic expression to challenge its practice. All who study the 18th century and all who revere this woman, a most significant poet in the American literary canon, will undoubtedly know and celebrate the full aesthetic, political, and religious implications of her art before the end of this century, as well as even more salient facts about her life and works.