March 10 Minutes

Yesterday in class we started discussing Phillis Wheatley's poem "To His Excellency General Washington." We continued that discussion today in class. We noted that this poem had a traditional structure as evident through the arrangement of the poem into couplets with rhyming at the ends of the lines. We also discussed Columbia, who was named multiple times throughout the poem. Columbia is America's goddess. The mention of her name is Phillis Wheatley's way of saying that we should model ourselves after the classics (Athens, etc...). These classics also had deities. The connection to classics helps to strengthen the idea that the nation needs to break away from the British. Wheatley says that we are special because we are the ultimate inheritors of the classics and only our nation can build a superior civilization modeled after the traditions of these classics. The British are inferior to us because they had the chance to make their civilization superior through the classics, but they failed. Finally, we discussed Phillis Wheatley's reference to epics. She invokes the Muses, who are generally invoked when someone is telling an epic. The Muses are supposed to give inspiration and help the narrator tell his story. Another similarity to epics comes in the form of similar subjects. Both this poem and epics talk of war and fighting and generally revolve around a single hero.

--Alexis