assessments in his edited volumeCritical Essays
on Phillis Wheatley. Wheatley’s English pub-
lisher, Archibald Bell, for instance, advertised
that Wheatley was ‘‘one of the greatest instances
of pure, unassisted Genius, that the world ever
produced.’’ Benjamin Rush, a prominent aboli-
tionist, holds that Wheatley’s ‘‘singular genius
and accomplishments are such as not only do
honor to her sex, but to human nature.’’ Aboli-
tionists like Rush used Wheatley as proof for the
argument of black humanity, an issue then
debated by philosophers.According to Robinson,
theGentleman’s Magazine of London and the
London Monthly Reviewdisagreed on the quality
of the poems but agreed on the ingeniousness of
the author, pointing out the shame that she was a
slave in a freedom-loving city like Boston. From
the start, critics have had difficulty disentangling
the racial and literary issues.
Thomas Jefferson’s scorn (reported by Rob-
inson), however, famously articulates the common
low opinion of African capability: ‘‘Religion,
indeed, has produced a Phillis Whately, but it
could not produce a poet. The compositions pub-
lished under her name are below the dignity of
criticism.’’ On the other hand, Gilbert Imlay, a
writer and diplomat, disagreed with Jefferson,
holding Wheatley’s genius to be superior to Jeffer-
son’s. As cited by Robinson, he wonders, ‘‘What
white person upon this continent has written more
beautiful lines?’’
A resurgence of interest in Wheatley during
the 1960s and 1970s, with the rise of African
American studies, led again to mixed opinions,
this time among black readers. Eleanor Smith, in
her 1974 article in theJournal of Negro Education,
pronounces Wheatley too white in her values to be
of any use to black people. Carole A. Parks, writ-
ing inBlack Worldthat same year, describes a
Mississippi poetry festival where Wheatley’s
poetry was read in a way that made her ‘‘Blacker.’’
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., inThe Trials of Phillis
Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her
Encounters with the Founding Fathers(2003), con-
tends that Wheatley’s reputation as a whitewashed
black poet rests almost entirely on interpretations
of ‘‘On Being Brought from Africa to America,’’
which he calls ‘‘the most reviled poem in African-
American literature.’’ The reception became such
because the poem does notexplicitly challenge
slavery and almost seems to subtly approve of it,
in that it brought about the poet’s Christianity.
Recently, critics like James Levernier have
tried to provide a more balanced view of Wheat-
ley’s achievement by studying her style within its
historical context. Levernier considers Wheatley
predominantly in view of her unique position as
a black poet in Revolutionary white America.
This position called for a strategy by which she
cleverly empowered herself with moral authority
through irony, the critic claims in aStylearticle.
The debate continues, and it has become more
informed, as based on the complete collections
of Wheatley’s writings and on more scholarly
investigations of her background.CRITICISMSusan Andersen
Andersen holds a PhD in literature and teaches
literature and writing. In the following essay on
‘‘On Being Brought from Africa to America,’’ she
focuses on Phillis Wheatley’s self-styled personaFrontpiece and title page from Phillis Wheatley’s
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
(CopyrightÓThe Pierpont Morgan Library / Art Resource NY.
Reproduced by permission)
On Being Brought from Africa to America