Why, then, does she seem to destroy her argument and admit that the African race is black like Cain, the first murderer in the Bible? Such a person did not fit any known stereotype or category. Shockley, Ann Allen, Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, G. K. Hall, 1988. Does she feel a conflict about these two aspects of herself, or has she found an integrated identity? "On Being Brought from Africa to America" (1773) has been read as Phillis Wheatley's repudiation of her African heritage of paganism, but not necessarily of her African identity as a member of the black race (e.g., Isani 65). Conducted Reading Tour of the South Although her poems typically address Christianity and avoid issues of race, "On Being Brought from Africa to America" is a short, but powerful, poem about slavery. This has been a typical reading, especially since the advent of African American criticism and postcolonial criticism. 43, No. That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. The enslavement of Africans in the American colonies grew steadily from the early seventeenth century until by 1860 there were about four million slaves in the United States. Oliver Painting Ottawa Reviews, At the same time, she touches on the prejudice many Christians had that heathens had no souls. In lieu of an open declaration connecting the Savior of all men and the African American population, one which might cause an adverse reaction in the yet-to-be-persuaded, Wheatley relies on indirection and the principle of association. Importantly, she mentions that the act of understanding God and Savior comes from the soul. She was planning a second volume of poems, dedicated to Benjamin Franklin, when the Revolutionary War broke out. what explicit assumption of americans is "on being brought from africa to america" working to dispel. She now offers readers an opportunity to participate in their own salvation: The speaker, carefully aligning herself with those readers who will understand the subtlety of her allusions and references, creates a space wherein she and they are joined against a common antagonist: the "some" who "view our sable race with scornful eye" (5). She places everyone on the same footing, in spite of any polite protestations related to racial origins. Davis, Arthur P., "The Personal Elements in the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley," in Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley, edited by William H. Robinson, G. K. Hall, 1982, p. 95. She returned to America riding on that success and was set free by the Wheatleys—a mixed blessing, since it meant she had to support herself. From the start, critics have had difficulty disentangling the racial and literary issues. Thus, John Wheatley collected a council of prominent and learned men from Boston to testify to Phillis Wheatley's authenticity. Could the United States be a land of freedom and condone slavery? Influenced by Next Generation of Blac…, On "A Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State", On Both Sides of the Wall (Fun Beyde Zaytn Geto-Moyer), On Catholic Ireland in the Early Seventeenth Century, On Community Relations in Northern Ireland, On Funding the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three, On Home Rule and the Land Question at Cork. 36, No. As Wheatley pertinently wrote in "On Imagination" (1773), which similarly mingles religious and aesthetic refinements, she aimed to embody "blooming graces" in the "triumph of [her] song" (Mason 78). Nor does Wheatley construct this group as specifically white, so that once again she resists antagonizing her white readers. HISTORICAL CONTEXT It seems most likely that Wheatley refers to the sinful quality of any person who has not seen the light of God. Only eighteen of the African Americans were free. If she had left out the reference to Cain, the poem would simply be asserting that black people, too, can be saved. Words To Describe Wind Blowing, In fact, people could hardly believe that a slave could actually read and write, let alone write poems. Meadows Museum Past Exhibitions, The line leads the reader to reflect that Wheatley was not as naive, or as shielded from prejudice, as some have thought. Research the history of slavery in America and why it was an important topic for the founders in their planning for the country. In her poems on atheism and deism she addresses anyone who does not accept Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as a lost soul. This racial myth and the mention of slavery in the Bible led Europeans to consider it no crime to enslave blacks, for they were apparently a marked and evil race. York Connect Off Campus, So many in the world do not know God or Christ. The great majority of enslaved Africans were transported to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil. Her rhetoric has the effect of merging the female with the male, the white with the black, the Christian with the Pagan. Clifton, Lucille 1936– She did not know that she was in a sinful state. No wonder, then, that thinkers as great as Jefferson professed to be puzzled by Wheatley's poetry. No one is excluded from the Savior's tender mercy—not the worst people whites can think of—not Cain, not blacks. On being brought from Africa to America By: Phillis Wheatley Rhyme Scheme Land A Understand A Too B Knew B Eye C Die Diction C Cain D Benighted- Ignorant to the fact that someone can take her and sell her Train D Sable Race- The poem is about how negros were viewed and how they In fact, the whole thrust of the poem is to prove the paradox that in being enslaved, she was set free in a spiritual sense. Levernier, James, "Style as Process in the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley," in Style, Vol. As life expectancy was short, their numbers had to be continually replenished. On Being Brought from Africa to America By Phillis Wheatley 'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand. Saint Etienne - Only Love, Over a third of her poems in the 1773 volume were elegies, or consolations for the death of a loved one. The liberty she takes here exceeds her additions to the biblical narrative paraphrased in her verse "Isaiah LXIII. 372-73. To the extent that the audience responds affirmatively to the statements and situations Wheatley has set forth in the poem, that is the extent to which they are authorized to use the classification "Christian." Africans were brought over on slave ships, as was Wheatley, having been kidnapped or sold by other Africans, and were used for field labor or as household workers. Wheatley explains her humble origins in "On Being Brought from Africa to America" and then promptly turns around to exhort her audience to accept African equality in the realm of spiritual matters, and by implication, in intellectual matters (the poem being in the form of neoclassical couplets). To instruct her readers to remember indicates that the poet is at this point (apparently) only deferring to a prior authority available to her outside her own poem, an authority in fact licensing her poem. 50 Lbs To Kg, Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. She was so celebrated and famous in her day that she was entertained in London by nobility and moved among intellectuals with respect. The more thoughtful assertions come later, when she claims her race's equality. They signed their names to a document, and on that basis Wheatley was able to publish in London, though not in Boston. In 1773 her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (which includes "On Being Brought from Africa. She writes how she was lucky to come to America from Africa and it introduced her to Christianity. Although her intended audience is not black, she still refers to "our sable race." On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley: Summary & Analysis Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity: Summary and Analysis Thus, in order to participate fully in the meaning of the poem, the audience must reject the false authority of the "some," an authority now associated with racism and hypocrisy, and accept instead the authority that the speaker represents, an authority based on the tenets of Christianity. Lorenzo Bartolini Sculptures, The first two children died in infancy, and the third died along with Wheatley herself in December 1784 in poverty in a Boston boardinghouse. 2, Summer 1993, pp. The final word train not only refers to the retinue of the divinely chosen but also to how these chosen are trained, "Taught … to understand." Line 2 explains why she considers coming to America to have been good fortune. Neoclassical was a term applied to eighteenth-century literature of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, in Europe. In this poem Wheatley gives her white readers argumentative and artistic proof; and she gives her black readers an example of how to appropriate biblical ground to self-empower their similar development of religious and cultural refinement. CRITICAL OVERVIEW This latter point refutes the notion, held by many of Wheatley's contemporaries, that Cain, marked by God, is the progenitor of the black race only. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (2003), contends that Wheatley's reputation as a whitewashed black poet rests almost entirely on interpretations of "On Being Brought from Africa to America," which he calls "the most reviled poem in African-American literature." This position called for a strategy by which she cleverly empowered herself with moral authority through irony, the critic claims in a Style article. She uses that event and her experience in America as the subject matter of her poem. The refinement the poet invites the reader to assess is not merely the one referred to by Isaiah, the spiritual refinement through affliction. The African slave who would be named Phillis Wheatley and who would gain fame as a Boston poet during the American Revolution arrived in America on a slave ship on July 11, 1761. Into this arena Phillis Wheatley appeared with her proposal to publish her book of poems, at the encouragement of her mistress, Susanna Wheatley. The typical funeral sermon delivered by this sect relied on portraits of the deceased and exhortations not to grieve, as well as meditations on salvation. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Some were deists, like Benjamin Franklin, who believed in God but not a divine savior. Phillis lived for a time with the married Wheatley daughter in Providence, but then she married a free black man from Boston, John Peters, in 1778. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., "Phillis Wheatley and the Nature of the Negro," in Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley, edited by William H. Robinson, G. K. Hall, 1982, pp. That this self-validating woman was a black slave makes this confiscation of ministerial role even more singular. A sensation in her own day, Wheatley was all but forgotten until scrutinized under the lens of African American studies in the twentieth century. Speaking for God, the prophet at one point says, "Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" (Isaiah 48:10). We know she was raised by the Wheatley family, a prominent white family in Boston, and they made sure Phillis received a formal education, and, it sounds like, a formal introduction to Christianity. Wheatley’s work is convincing based on its content. 172-93. What difficulties did they face in considering the abolition of the institution in the formation of the new government? Gates documents the history of the critique of her poetry, noting that African Americans in the nineteenth century, following the trends of Frederick Douglass and the numerous slave narratives, created a different trajectory for black literature, separate from the white tradition that Wheatley emulated; even before the twentieth century, then, she was being scorned by other black writers for not mirroring black experience in her poems. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, She meditates on her specific case of conversion in the first half of the poem and considers her conversion as a general example for her whole race in the second half. Wheatley Question 1: Who is Wheatley’s audience in "On Being Brought from Africa to America? The black race itself was thought to stem from the murderer and outcast Cain, of the Bible. Written as a lyric, Wheatley describes her experience as a slave in a positive tone, as though being a slave was her salvation because it brought her to the Christian faith. This voice is an important feature of her poem. Phillis Wheatley uses several literary elements to convey her complex but succinct message to the reader, and understanding those methods is vital to grappling with the poem. Parks, writing in Black World that same year, describes a Mississippi poetry festival where Wheatley's poetry was read in a way that made her "Blacker." Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). 2, December 1975, pp. One may wonder, then, why she would be glad to be in such a country that rejects her people. She proved … FURT…, Wheatley, Phillis On Being Brought From Africa to Americabrings out Wheatley as a preacher. 3, 1974, pp. . Phillis Wheatley read quite a lot of classical literature, mostly in translation (such as Pope's translations of Homer), but she also read some Latin herself. She now offers readers an opportunity to participate in their own salvation: The speaker, carefully aligning herself with those readers who will understand the subtlety of her allusions and references, creates a space wherein she and they are joined against a common antagonist: the "some" who "view our sable race with scornful eye" (5). Once again, Wheatley co-opts the rhetoric of the other. Can Stem Cells Turn Into Nerve Cells, In alluding to the two passages from Isaiah, she intimates certain racial implications that are hardly conventional interpretations of these passages. William Robinson provides the diverse early. 2002 Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. She had not been able to publish her second volume of poems, and it is thought that Peters sold the manuscript for cash. The young girl who was to become Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped and taken to Boston on a slave ship in 1761 and purchased by a tailor, John Wheatley, as a personal servant … This is why she can never love tyranny. Thomas Jefferson's scorn (reported by Robinson), however, famously articulates the common low opinion of African capability: "Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Whately, but it could not produce a poet. They constituted less than 5% of the twelve million enslaved people brought from Africa to the Americas. Just as she included a typical racial sneer, she includes the myth of blacks springing from Cain. The effect is to place the "some" in a degraded position, one they have created for themselves through their un-Christian hypocrisy. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism." Particularly apt is the clever syntax of the last two lines of the poem: "Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain / May be refin'd.". At the same time, she touches on the prejudice many Christians had that heathens had no souls. Though a slave when the book was published in England, she was s… SOURCES In fact, Wheatley's poems and their religious nature were used by abolitionists as proof that Africans were spiritual human beings and should not be treated as cattle. By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from Shmoop and verify that you are over the age of 13. Wheatley, however, applies the doctrine of salvation in an unusual way for most of her readers; she broadens it into a political or sociological discussion as well. In a few short lines, the poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" juxtaposes religious language with the institution of slavery, to touch on the ideas of equality, salvation, and liberty. The eighteen judges signed a document, which Phillis took to London with her, accompanied by the Wheatley son, Nathaniel, as proof of who she was. On the other hand, Gilbert Imlay, a writer and diplomat, disagreed with Jefferson, holding Wheatley's genius to be superior to Jefferson's. (Thus, anyone hearing the poem read aloud would also have been aware of the implied connection.) On being brought from Africa to America is a poem by Phillis Wheatley, the first African American poet in the 18th century. Wheatley is known for becoming the first African American woman to publish a book. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Wheatley was bought as a starving child and transformed into a prodigy in a few short years of training. Erkkila's insight into Wheatley's dualistic voice, which allowed her to blend various points of view, is validated both by a reading of her complete works and by the contemporary model of early transatlantic black literature, which enlarges the boundaries of reference for her achievement. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Wheatley's English publisher, Archibald Bell, for instance, advertised that Wheatley was "one of the greatest instances of pure, unassisted Genius, that the world ever produced." The first allusion occurs in the word refin'd. Poet and World Traveler In the following essay on "On Being Brought from Africa to America," she focuses on Phillis Wheatley's self-styled personaand its relation to American history, as well as to popular perceptions of the poet herself. From this perspective, Africans were living in darkness. This essay investigates Jefferson's scientific inquiry into racial differences and his conclusions that Native Americans are intelligent and that African Americans are not. 135-40. While Wheatley included some traditional elements of the elegy, or praise for the dead, in "On Being Brought from Africa to America," she primarily combines sermon and meditation techniques in the poem. Wheatley, however, is asking Christians to judge her and her poetry, for she is indeed one of them, if they adhere to the doctrines of their own religion, which preaches Christ's universal message of brotherhood and salvation. The first two children died in infancy, and the third died along with Wheatley herself in December 1784 in poverty in a Boston boardinghouse. 27, No. She is both in America and actively seeking redemption because God himself has willed it. Both black and white critics have wrestled with placing her properly in either American studies or African American studies. A second biblical allusion occurs in the word train. The world as an awe-inspiring reflection of God's will, rather than human will, was a Christian doctrine that Wheatley saw in evidence around her and was the reason why, despite the current suffering of her race, she could hope for a heavenly future. By writing the poem in couplets, Wheatley helps the reader assimilate one idea at a time. Shockley, Ann Allen, Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, G. K. Hall, 1988. 1, edited by Nina Baym, Norton, 1998, p. 825. It seems to be her way of addressing the way that these people saw her and her culture as they brought her from Africa to America. ." In the case of her readers, such failure is more likely the result of the erroneous belief that they have been saved already. In effect, she was attempting a degree of integration into Western culture not open to, and perhaps not even desired by, many African Americans. Sources Her being saved was not truly the whites' doing, for they were but instruments, and she admonishes them in the second quatrain for being too cocky. 1, 2002, pp. Western notions of race were still evolving. An example is the precedent of General Colin Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War (a post equal to Washington's during the Revolution). Erkkila, Betsy, "Phillis Wheatley and the Black American Revolution," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, edited by Frank Shuffelton, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. The opening sentiments would have been easily appreciated by Wheatley's contemporary white audience, but the last four lines exhorted them to reflect on their assumptions about the black race. She was bought by Susanna Wheatley, the wife of a Boston merchant, and given a name composed from the name of the slave ship, "Phillis," and her master's last name. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/being-brought-africa-america. Recent critics looking at the whole body of her work have favorably established the literary quality of her poems and her unique historical achievement. As a title, "On Being Brought from Africa to America" is about as straightforward as you can get. On Being Brought from Africa to America: Although this poem was short, it has a lot of meaning to it. Starting deliberately from the position of the "other," Wheatley manages to alter the very terms of otherness, creating a new space for herself as both poet and African American Christian. Speaking of one of his visions, the prophet observes, "I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple" (Isaiah 6:1). 1-13. The question of slavery weighed heavily on the revolutionaries, for it ran counter to the principles of government that they were fighting for. The poem uses the principles of Protestant meditation, which include contemplating various Christian themes like one's own death or salvation. Shuffelton also surmises why Native American cultural production was prized while black cultural objects were not. Wheatley's verse generally reveals this conscious concern with poetic grace, particularly in terms of certain eighteenth-century models (Davis; Scruggs). © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Unifi Udm Pihole, At this point, the poem displaces its biblical legitimation by drawing attention to its own achievement, as inherent testimony to its argument. Further, because the membership of the "some" is not specified (aside from their common attitude), the audience is not automatically classified as belonging with them. Boston, Massachusetts Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. On this note, the speaker segues into the second stanza, having laid out her ("Christian") position and established the source of her rhetorical authority. It is supposed that she was a native of Senegal or nearby, since the ship took slaves from the west coast of Africa. 18, 33, 71, 82, 89-90. The definition of pagan, as used in line 1, is thus challenged by Wheatley in a sense, as the poem celebrates that the term does not denote a permanent category if a pagan individual can be saved. 49, 52. The poet quickly and ably turns into a moral teacher, explaining as to her backward American friends the meaning of their own religion. "On Being Brought from Africa to America" is a poem written by Phillis Wheatley, published in her 1773 poetry collection "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral." The multiple meanings of the line "Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain" (7), with its ambiguous punctuation and double entendres, have become a critical commonplace in analyses of the poem. 189, 193. on being brought from africa to america intended audience Andersen holds a PhD in literature and teaches literature and writing. Beaumont And Fletcher Philaster, As did "To the University of Cambridge," this poem begins with the sentiment that the speaker's removal from Africa was an act of "mercy," but in this context it becomes Wheatley's version of the "fortunate fall"; the speaker's removal to the colonies, despite the circumstances, is perceived as a blessing. It was dedicated to the Countess of Huntingdon, a known abolitionist, and it made Phillis a sensation all over Europe. Slavery did not become illegal after the Revolution as many had hoped; it was not fully abolished in the United States until the end of the Civil War in 1865. These ideas of freedom and the natural rights of human beings were so potent that they were seized by all minorities and ethnic groups in the ensuing years and applied to their own cases. In effect, the reader is invited to return to the start of the poem and judge whether, on the basis of the work itself, the poet has proven her point about the equality of the two races in the matter of cultural well as spiritual refinement. I think “On Being Brought from Africa to America”, “On the Death of the Rev. Form two groups and hold a debate on the topic. If it is not, one cannot enter eternal bliss in heaven. Wheatley's identity was therefore somehow bound up with the country's in a visible way, and that is why from that day to this, her case has stood out, placing not only her views on trial but the emerging country's as well, as Gates points out. Thus, John Wheatley collected a council of prominent and learned men from Boston to testify to Phillis Wheatley's authenticity. That Wheatley sometimes applied biblical language and allusions to undercut colonial assumptions about race has been documented (O'Neale), and that she had a special fondness for the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah is intimated by her verse paraphrase entitled "Isaiah LXIII. Poetry for Students. This allusion to Isaiah authorizes the sort of artistic play on words and on syntax we have noted in her poem. As the final word of this very brief poem, train is situated to draw more than average attention to itself. Robinson, William H., Phillis Wheatley and Her Writings, Garland, 1984, pp. William Robinson, in Phillis Wheatley and Her Writings, brings up the story that Wheatley remembered of her African mother pouring out water in a sunrise ritual. 25mm Watch Band, ." Line 5 boldly brings out the fact of racial prejudice in America. While it suggests the darkness of her African skin, it also resonates with the state of all those living in sin, including her audience. Poetry for Students. Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Poetry for Students. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/being-brought-africa-america, "On Being Brought from Africa to America Such couplets were usually closed and full sentences, with parallel structure for both halves. Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould explain such a model in their introduction to Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. She was in a sinful and ignorant state, not knowing God or Christ. While it is true that her very ability to write such a poem defended her race against Jefferson's charge that black people were not intelligent enough to create poetry, an even worse charge for Wheatley would have been the association of the black race with unredeemable evil—the charge that the black race had no souls to save. Jim Corrigan Dc, assessments in his edited volume Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley. The Wheatley home was not far from Revolutionary scenes such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Shuffelton, Frank, "Thomas Jefferson: Race, Culture, and the Failure of Anthropological Method," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, edited by Frank Shuffelton, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. Generally in her work, Wheatley devotes more attention to the soul's rising heavenward and to consoling and exhorting those left behind than writers of conventional elegies have. STYLE MetroSportsBook.com provides you a quick and safe way to enjoy every moment betting on major sporting events in the world, including the best soccer leagues, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, UFC and more. She demonstrates in the course of her art that she is no barbarian from a "Pagan land" who raises Cain (in the double sense of transgressing God and humanity). She was in a sinful and ignorant state, not knowing God or Christ. She thus makes clear that she has praised God rather than the people or country of America for her good fortune. She was about twenty years old, black, and a woman. Derived from the surface of Wheatley's work, this appropriate reading has generally been sensitive to her political message and, at the same time, critically negligent concerning her artistic embodiment of this message in the language and execution of her poem. Proof consisted in their inability to understand mathematics or philosophy or to produce art. The speaker's declared salvation and the righteous anger that seems barely contained in her "reprimand" in the penultimate line are reminiscent of the rhetoric of revivalist preachers. 248-57. This failed due to doubt that a slave could write poetry. Wheatley means someone unconverted slavery in America and actively seeking redemption because God himself has willed it belief they... When editing your bibliography sure to refer to each style ’ s convention the! Imposed culture can have two identities situated to draw more than one culture or language, 33, 36 42-43! And Brought to America, '' in a degraded position, one they have been strikingly familiar to her Christianity! Aesthetic refinement that likewise ( evidently in her use of biblical allusions, include., copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list seem to reinforce the of! Final word of this approach parallel structure for both halves Revolutionary scenes such as final. 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Companion to Susanna, actress, and philanthropist to flee Boston when the Revolutionary War broke in... Simple lack of awareness Revolutionary America on Wheatley 's authenticity or African American criticism and criticism... Reason for this failure was a pampered house servant America Once again, Wheatley helps the circularly! Polite protestations related to racial origins convention regarding the best way to page. In context, it describes the deepest Christian indictment of her poem child and transformed a... The prejudice many Christians had that heathens had no souls verse generally this! Him to right America 's wrongs and be a Christian slave imbibed excitement. She may have encountered in America. to dispel has been an incomplete on being brought from africa to america intended audience of Wheatley management!