Phillis Wheatley Critical Essay | Critical Essay by M. A. Richmond

Critical Essay by M. A. Richmond

SOURCE: "Poetry and Fame," in Bid the Vassal Soar: Interpretive Essays on the Life and Poetry of Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784) and George Moses Horton (ca. 1797-1883), Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974, pp. 24-30

In the following essay, Richmond discusses allusions in two early poems to the political and social conditions of pre-revolutionary America.

The very title was constructed like a cathedral: "An Elegiac Poem on the Death of the celebrated Divine, and eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the late Reverend, and Pious George Whitefield, Chaplain to Right Honourable the Countess of Huntingdon, &c, &c, Who made his exit from this transitory State to dwell in the Celestial Realms of Bliss, on Lord's Day, 30th of September, 1770."

Phillis Wheatley had been writing verse for several years, but it was the spectacular success of this elegy that catapulted her from the level of local celebrity to the plateau of...
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