Phyllis Wheatley

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Phillis Wheatley was one of the most renowned poets of the eighteenth century and her poetry's was as good as the best America poetry of her age. She was born in Gambia, Africa as a slave child and sold to John Wheatley in Boston on July 11, 1761. She was the first African-American to publish a book of imaginative writing and the first to start the African-American literary tradition. She combined religion and neo-classicism in her poems and most of her poems propose an escape from slavery. She rejoices death and the rewards and liberty of life after death.

Mary Wheatley, the daughter of the family, taught her Latin, religion, English and literature. Apparently brilliant and with an ability for learning, Phillis became fluent in English. She was able to read passages from the bible and also showed interest towards astronomy, geography, history, Latin and Greek classics and British literature. Soon enough she was considered as a full-fledged poet in the art.

Wheatley was influenced by the religious beliefs of her master and hence accepted Christianity as her religion. Phillis Wheatley's life was a testimony to the oppressors of her time and a contribution to history and American literature. Twenty of Wheatley's 46 poems published are about death. Phillis achieved success through her intellect, hard work and determination. She always gave glory to God and claimed none for herself. Religion exerted a strong influence on her life and humility probably earned her reverence and endearment of eminent people she met.

Wheatley's poems speak very little about her origin in Africa or her class as a slave. Phillis published her first elegy in the Newport Mercury. She moved to London, as her poems were not published in Boston, where thirty-nine of her poems were published as Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Her poems replicated the religious and classical background of her British schooling. "Niobe in Distress", an elegy she wrote about an evangelical Methodist minister, George Whitefield, brought her fame after his death. After visiting with General Washington, her poem was published in the Virginia Gazette. Phillis married John Peters and had three children of which none survived. She was saddened and poignant and could not focus as much with her writing. She then wrote a poem in memory of her friend and Dr. Samuel Cooper, who baptized her, "On the death of their infant son." She loved freedom and condemned slavery indirectly in her poems by writing about autocracy and autonomy.

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