27, No. STYLE The speaker then discusses how many white people unfairly looked down on African American people. She is both in America and actively seeking redemption because God himself has willed it. Wheatley was a member of the Old South Congregational Church of Boston. Show all. This is a reference to the biblical Book of Genesis and the two sons of Adam. Religion was the main interest of Wheatley's life, inseparable from her poetry and its themes. In regards to the meter, Wheatley makes use of the most popular pattern, iambic pentameter. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. 18 On being brought from AFRICA to AMERICA. The need for a postcolonial criticism arose in the twentieth century, as centuries of European political domination of foreign lands were coming to a close. 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. 3, 1974, pp. Although she was an enslaved person, Phillis Wheatley Peters was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. SOURCES https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/being-brought-africa-america, "On Being Brought from Africa to America 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). Boston, Massachusetts To be "benighted" is to be in moral or spiritual darkness as a result of ignorance or lack of enlightenment, certainly a description with which many of Wheatley's audience would have agreed. The later poem exhibits an even greater level of complexity and authorial control, with Wheatley manipulating her audience by even more covert means. These were pre-Revolutionary days, and Wheatley imbibed the excitement of the era, recording the Boston Massacre in a 1770 poem. Almost immediately after her arrival in America, she was sold to the Wheatley family of Boston, Massachusetts. Here she mentions nothing about having been free in Africa while now being enslaved in America. 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' is a poem by Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-84), who was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773 when she was probably still in her early twenties. It is important to pay attention to the rhyming end words, as often this can elucidate the meaning of the poem. During the war in Iraq, black recruitment falls off, in part due to the many more civil career options open to young blacks. 8May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. There are poems in which she idealizes the African climate as Eden, and she constantly identifies herself in her poems as the Afric muse. The Challenge "There are more things in heav'n and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."Hamlet. being Brought from Africa to America." In the poem "Wheatley chose to use the meditation as the form for her contemplation of her enslavement." (Frazier) In the poem "On being Brought from Africa to America." Phillis Wheatley uses different poetic devices like figurative language, form, and irony to express the hypocrisy of American racism. "On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley". Look at the poems and letters of Phillis Wheatley, and find evidence of her two voices, African and American. She was thus part of the emerging dialogue of the new republic, and her poems to leading public figures in neoclassical couplets, the English version of the heroic meters of the ancient Greek poet Homer, were hailed as masterpieces. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), p.98. She wrote them for people she knew and for prominent figures, such as for George Whitefield, the Methodist minister, the elegy that made her famous. Christianity: The speaker of this poem talks about how it was God's "mercy" that brought her to America. The final and highly ironic demonstration of otherness, of course, would be one's failure to understand the very poem that enacts this strategy. Some view our sable race with scornful eye. The Cabinet Dictionary - The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia To the University of Cambridge, in New England, Instant downloads of all 1699 LitChart PDFs She was planning a second volume of poems, dedicated to Benjamin Franklin, when the Revolutionary War broke out. For example: land/understandCain/train. Q. The excuse for her race being enslaved is that it is thought to be evil and without a chance for salvation; by asserting that the black race is as competent for and deserving of salvation as any other, the justification for slavery is refuted, for it cannot be right to treat other divine souls as property. Personification. "On Being Brought from Africa to America" is really about the irony of Christian people who treat Black people as inferior. In "On Being Brought from Africa to America," Wheatley asserts religious freedom as an issue of primary importance. A single stanza of eight lines, with full rhyme and classic iambic pentameter beat, it basically says that black people can become Christian believers and in this respect are just the same as everyone else. When we consider how Wheatley manages these biblical allusions, particularly how she interprets them, we witness the extent to which she has become self-authorized as a result of her training and refinement. succeed. The line in which the reference appears also conflates Christians and Negroes, making the mark of Cain a reference to any who are unredeemed. The resulting verse sounds pompous and inauthentic to the modern ear, one of the problems that Wheatley has among modern audiences. Wheatley goes on to say that when she was in Africa, she knew neither about the existence of God nor the need of a savior. She grew increasingly critical of slavery and wrote several letters in opposition to it. It is easy to see the calming influence she must have had on the people who sought her out for her soothing thoughts on the deaths of children, wives, ministers, and public figures, praising their virtues and their happy state in heaven. HubPages is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. Sources From the zephyr's wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. This poetic demonstration of refinement, of "blooming graces" in both a spiritual and a cultural sense, is the "triumph in [her] song" entitled "On Being Brought from Africa to America.". 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). On the other hand, Gilbert Imlay, a writer and diplomat, disagreed with Jefferson, holding Wheatley's genius to be superior to Jefferson's. As her poem indicates, with the help of God, she has overcome, and she exhorts others that they may do the same. Remember, Susanna Wheatley, her mistress, became a second mother to her, and Wheatley adopted her mistress's religion as her own, thus winning praise in the Boston of her day as being both an intelligent and spiritual being. One of Wheatley's better known pieces of poetry is "On being brought from Africa to America.". Line 5 boldly brings out the fact of racial prejudice in America. The Impact of the Early Years Wheatley was in the midst of the historic American Revolution in the Boston of the 1770s. She published her first poem in 1767, later becoming a household name. For My People, All People: Cicely Tyson, Angela Bassett, Viola Davis Wheatley's mistress encouraged her writing and helped her publish her first pieces in newspapers and pamphlets. Her rhetoric has the effect of merging the female with the male, the white with the black, the Christian with the Pagan. Wheatleys most prominent themes in this piece are religion, freedom, and equality. She was instructed in Evangelical Christianity from her arrival and was a devout practicing Christian. Those who have contended that Wheatley had no thoughts on slavery have been corrected by such poems as the one to the Earl of Dartmouth, the British secretary of state for North America. 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." 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. The black race itself was thought to stem from the murderer and outcast Cain, of the Bible. In fact, blacks fought on both sides of the Revolutionary War, hoping to gain their freedom in the outcome. Wheatley is talking about the people who live in Africa; they have not yet been exposed to Christianity or the idea of salvation. The darker races are looked down upon. This same spirit in literature and philosophy gave rise to the revolutionary ideas of government through human reason, as popularized in the Declaration of Independence. The first time Wheatley uses this is in line 1 where the speaker describes her "land," or Africa, as "pagan" or ungodly. Source: Mary McAleer Balkun, "Phillis Wheatley's Construction of Otherness and the Rhetoric of Performed Ideology," in African American Review, Vol. Alliteration occurs with diabolic dye and there is an allusion to the old testament character Cain, son of Adam and Eve. This question was discussed by the Founding Fathers and the first American citizens as well as by people in Europe. Plus, get practice tests, quizzes, and personalized coaching to help you The last two lines of the poem make use of imperative language, which is language that gives a command or tells the reader what to do. Wheatley's shift from first to third person in the first and second stanzas is part of this approach. If the "angelic train" of her song actually enacts or performs her argumentthat an African-American can be trained (taught to understand) the refinements of religion and artit carries a still more subtle suggestion of self-authorization. That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. , black as Also supplied are tailor-made skill lessons, activities, and poetry writing prompts; the . Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/phillis-wheatley/on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america/. . Iambic pentameter is traditional in English poetry, and Wheatley's mostly white and educated audience would be very familiar with it. This creates a rhythm very similar to a heartbeat. The latter is implied, at least religiously, in the last lines. She had been enslaved for most of her life at this point, and upon her return to America and close to the deaths of her owners, she was freed from slavery. . Such couplets were usually closed and full sentences, with parallel structure for both halves. She was about twenty years old, black, and a woman. In this lesson, students will. themes in this piece are religion, freedom, and equality, https://poemanalysis.com/phillis-wheatley/on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america/, Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. PDF Popular Rap Songs With Figurative Language / Cgeprginia Form two groups and hold a debate on the topic. both answers. The opening thought is thus easily accepted by a white or possibly hostile audience: that she is glad she came to America to find true religion. Although he, as well as many other prominent men, condemned slavery as an unjust practice for the country, he nevertheless held slaves, as did many abolitionists. assessments in his edited volume Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley. She was greatly saddened by the deaths of John and Susanna Wheatley and eventually married John Peters, a free African American man in Boston. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature in Context Neoclassical was a term applied to eighteenth-century literature of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, in Europe. Question 4 (2 points) Identify a type of figurative language in the Wheatley's poetry was heavily influenced by the poets she had studied, such as Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray. 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. Conditions on board some of the slave ships are known to have been horrendous; many died from illness; many were drowned. Anne Bradstreet Poems, Biography & Facts | Who is Anne Bradstreet? American Literature Unit 3 Test | Literature Quiz - Quizizz Like them (the line seems to suggest), "Once I redemption neither sought nor knew" (4; my emphasis). Provides readers with strategies for facilitating language learning and literacy learning. 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. For the unenlightened reader, the poems may well seem to be hackneyed and pedestrian pleas for acceptance; for the true Christian, they become a validation of one's status as a member of the elect, regardless of race . 19, No. All rights reserved. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/being-brought-africa-america. John Peters eventually abandoned Wheatley and she lived in abject poverty, working in a boardinghouse, until her death on December 5, 1784. J Afr Am St (2016) 20:67-74 (ff) >D/ CrossMark DOI 10. 1007/sl21 1 1 In the following excerpt, Balkun analyzes "On Being Brought from Africa to America" and asserts that Wheatley uses the rhetoric of white culture to manipulate her audience.
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