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The odyssey of Phillis Wheatley : a poet's journeys through American slavery and independence
Title
The odyssey of Phillis Wheatley : a poet's journeys through American slavery and independence / David Waldstreicher.
ISBN
9780809098248
0809098245
Edition
First edition.
Publication
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
Copyright Notice Date
©2023
Physical Description
viii, 480 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Summary
"A paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose poetry was at the heart of the American Revolution"-- Provided by publisher.
"Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites, celebrated political events, praised warriors, and used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the injustice of her enslaved condition. 'Can I then but pray / Others may never feel tyrannic sway?' By doing so, she added her voice to a vibrant, multisided conversation about race, slavery, and discontent with British rule; before and after her emancipation, her verses shook up racial etiquette and used familiar forms to create bold new meanings. She demonstrated a complex but crucial fact of the times: that the American Revolution both strengthened and limited Black slavery. In this new biography, the historian David Waldstreicher offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley's life and works, correcting myths, reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of her verse and the revolutionary era. Throughout The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, he demonstrates the continued vitality and resonance of a woman who wrote, in a founding gesture of American literature, 'Thy Power, O Liberty, makes strong the weak / And (wond'rous instinct) Ethiopians speak'." -- From publisher's description.
Format
Books
Language
English
Added to Catalog
May 10, 2023
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
The Beginnings, The Table, The Tale
The Ship, The Trade, The Wars
The Town, The Families, The Youth
The Teachers
The Preachers
The Monarch, The Poets, The Subjects, The Enslaved
The Nations
The Occupation
The Friends
The Women
The Proposal
The Movement
The Moment
The Campaign
The Metropolis
The Emancipation
The Patrons
The Book
The Readers
The Barbarians
The Americans
The Free
The Ends
The Afterlives.
Subjects
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