Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics
Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book. Born in Gambia in 1753, she came to America aboard a slave ship, the Phillis. From an early age, Wheatley exhibited a profound gift for verse, publishing her first poem in 1767. Her tribute to a famed pastor, "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield," followed in 1770, catapulting her into the international spotlight, and publication of her 1773 Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral in London created her an international star
Print Book, English, ©2010
University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, ©2010
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xii, 140 pages ; 24 cm
9781572337053, 1572337052
439907073
Before Wheatley: the imagination from Plato to Bruno
Before Wheatley: the imagination from Bruno to William Billings
Wheatley's "long poem" and subsequent considerations
After Wheatley: in England, France, and Germany, excluding Kant
Kant and Wheatley
Wheatley and Coleridge
Concluding remarks: is Wheatley the progenetrix of Romanticism?
Postscript: what remains to be done