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Phillis Wheatley's Vocation and the Paradox of the “Afric Muse”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Paula Bennett
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Abstract

Traditionally, criticism on Phillis Wheatley has emphasized her conformity to neoclassic conventions, failing to explore the depth of her commitment to Western culture or her resistance to colonial society. Building on recent studies that have focused on Wheatley's use of double voicing to mediate racial and political issues in her poetry, I examine how Wheatley exploits neoclassic conventions to rage at the limitations she felt prevented her from practicing her vocation fully. Wheatley sought to authorize her poetry in a culture that refused to legitimize her talent and accomplishments. Throughout her oeuvre she insists on her paradoxical identity as an “Afric muse” and stresses the peculiar spiritual and epistemic authority this oxymoronic identity gives her. Wheatley could not condemn her forcible transport to America, despite her abhorrence of slavery. Enlarged as well as oppressed by her society, she experienced a clash of competing ethnic allegiances that for her became a fructifying authenticity.

Type
Special Topic: Ethnicity
Information
PMLA , Volume 113 , Issue 1: Special Topic Ethnicity , January 1998 , pp. 64 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1998

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