Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Honors Thesis (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. English Dept.

Advisor(s)

Megan Cook

Second Advisor

Grace McGowan

Abstract

This thesis examines how Phillis Wheatley-Peters established literary and intellectual authority within an eighteenth-century world that questioned both her authorship and her intellectual capability as an enslaved Black woman. Rather than focusing on the external validation provided by the prefatory materials to Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), this study argues that Wheatley-Peters constructs authority through the poetry itself. Specifically, it explores how her use of neoclassical poetic conventions alongside Christian theological language functions to establish credibility and strengthen her moral and intellectual arguments.

Through close readings of poems including "On Being Brought from Africa to America" and "Ode to Neptune," this thesis demonstrates how Wheatley-Peters adapts classical literary forms and biblical discourse to engage questions of enslavement, morality, and human dignity. By mastering the literary and theological traditions that defined intellectual legitimacy in the eighteenth century, she challenged the racial assumptions that sought to exclude her from literary culture. Ultimately, this project argues that Wheatley-Peters not only secured authority for her own work but also revealed that the boundaries of literary and intellectual legitimacy were neither fixed nor exclusive.

Keywords

Phillis Wheatley-Peters, Poetry, Neoclassicism, Theology, Black Literature

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