Phillis Wheatley and the Poetical Legacy of Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

Phillis Wheatley and the Poetical Legacy of Eighteenth-Century England CHARLES SCRUGGS Although we have learned a good deal in recent years about Phillis Wheatley's life and literary career, we have rarely attempted to dis­ cuss her poetry as poetry.1 As America's first important black poet, Phillis Wheatley has been treated less as an artist and more as a curi­ osity. For instance, right at the outset, American responses to her poems remained tied to racial debate. When her first and only book of poetry—Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral—appeared in 1773, Abolitionists rushed to herald her artistic efforts as a symbol of deserved equality for the Negro; whereas pro-slavery critics poohpoohed her poems as objects beneath their contempt.2 This non-aesthetic approach to Phillis Wheatley continues in our own time. Her art is still a locus for political controversy, but the terms of the argu­ ment have shifted. In the 1970s, some feel that Phillis Wheatley has evinced a genuine concern for her race in her poetry; whereas others believe that the slave poet had a low opinion of her fellow bonds­ men.3 Whenever her poetry has been discussed as poetry, a "Romantic" bias has determined her critical reputation. Even in the twentieth century, criticism of her poetry has been shaped by prejudices inher­ ited from the Romantic period. To listen to her modern critics, "neoclassicism " was the bete noire of her brief poetic career. Saunders Red­ ding talks of the "chill ... of Pope's neo-classicism upon her," and M. A. Richmond complains that "neo-classicism" was responsible for 279 280 / SCRUGGS her artificiality. "Neo-classicism," says Richmond, encased Phillis Wheatley within the "tyranny of the couplet" and crushed her talent under "the heavy burden of ornamental rhetoric."4 The kindest thing that has been said of "neo-classicism" is that it taught her regularity.5 _ Thanks to Donald Greene (The Age of Exuberance) and others, we have become somewhat suspicious of the word "neo-classicism." Not only was this word invented by the nineteenth century but the con­ cept itself cannot possibly encompass the richness and complexity of eighteenth-century art. Even when the term "neo-classicism" makes sense within a limited context, no student of the eighteenth century today would treat it as though it were synonymous with the contem­ porary meaning of "artificiality." In fact, as all students of the eigh­ teenth century know, the word "artificial" presents an interesting his­ torical irony. The eighteenth century ordinarily did not use the word "artificial" in a pejorative sense—although it could be used that way. Usually "artificial" meant "artful, contrived with skill."6 That many of Phillis Wheatley's poems are "contrived with skill" is the basis of my argument in this paper. We are told that Phillis Wheatley was a bad poet because she lived in an age uncongenial, even hostile, to the true poetic sensibility. If she had been planted in better soil, such as the fertile ground of the Romantic period, then we would have had a real poet instead of a hothouse flower.7 Eigh­ teenth-century poetry, these critics insist, was impersonal, stylized, and ornate; and the poetical fashions of this period were dictatorial and absolute. Thus in imitating the literary conventions of her day, Phillis Wheatley wrote poetry which is artificial and insincere. This view is wrongheaded because it fails to understand those literary conventions which it deplores. More precisely, it fails to take into account that eighteenth-century aesthetic thought made a distinction between artifice and artificiality, and not between sincerity and arti­ ficiality.8 Because Phillis Wheatley's critics have refused to recognize the artifice of eighteenth-century poetry, they have not seen the com­ petent craftsmanship of Phillis Wheatley's poems. Not seeing the for­ est, they certainly cannot be expected to see the trees. I When Phillis Wheatley visited England in 1773, she was received there with more fanfare than she would ever receive in her lifetime in America. This reception is significant, because it tells us something about mid-eighteenth-century aesthetic taste. Arriving in London Phillis Wheatley I 281 with her owner Susannah Wheatley...