Jupiter Hammon, the first American of African descent to publish poetry and prose in the Western world, was born a slave at the aristocratic Lloyd Manor in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, on 17 Oct...
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Jupiter Hammon, the first black writer to publish in America, has been one of the least understood and most undervalued writers among those in the tradition that he engendered. Facts about his life ar...
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In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1915, Wegelin appraises Hammon's poetry as "commonplace" but concludes that his role as America's first black...
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In the following excerpt, Williams compares Hammon's poetry to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American religious verse.
[Hammon's] first publication was a poem of eighty-eight li...
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In the following excerpt, Kaplan briefly comments on the prominence of religion in Hammon's verse.
It is altogether possible that Jupiter Hammon was a preacher to the slaves in the communiti...
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In the following excerpt, Palmer criticizes Hammon's poetic style and his "intoxication " with religion, suggesting that Hammon could have made a stronger statement against slaver...
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In the following excerpt, Johnson discusses factors that might have influenced Hammon's writings. These factors include Hammon's religion, his life as a slave, eighteenth-century politic...
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In the following excerpt O'Neale argues that Hammon was actually one of this country's first African American protest writers. And given the context of eighteenth century society, and es...
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Jupiter Hammon
Critical Essay by Oscar Wegelin
