21 pages • 42 minutes read
Phillis WheatleyOn Imagination
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1773A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“An Essay on Man: Epistle II” by Alexander Pope (1733)
Pope is one of the British Neoclassical poets whom Wheatley admired and whose poetics she studied. Here, he offers an important counterargument to Wheatley’s celebration of the imagination and the power it has to command and direct both the intellect and the heart. Pope dismisses the imagination (what he terms “enthusiasm”) as dangerous and inelegant and deems those who find refuge in its made-up worlds bitter and weak willed.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)
Reflecting Wheatley’s fragile faith in the sheer power of the imagination to craft protective spaces that resist the erosion of time and defy the real-time world, Keats contemplates an elegant urn that he sees in a museum and realizes how the characters depicted on the urn have long since died. Yet, having been captured by the artist, they enjoy a kind of immortality.
“I Dwell in Possibility” by Emily Dickinson (c. 1862)
Another New England poet with whom Wheatley shares a great deal, Dickinson here reflects on the power of her imagination to conjure artificial worlds that are as sturdy, reliable, and “there” as the real world. The worlds of possibility constructed by her imagination are more beautiful and more resilient than the world that grinds away. An interesting comparison might examine whether Wheatley’s status as enslaved impacts her realization in the end that the imagination is not quite so resilient.
Further Literary Resources
“‘On Imagination’ and Material Culture” by Christy L. Pottroff (2022)
Pottroff offers a contemporary analysis of Wheatley and her relationship to the consumer capitalism culture of Boston. The article approaches the poem (and Wheatley’s life both as a domestic servant and later as a wife and mother) as a stinging indictment of materialism from a poet who struggled her entire life with poverty and her condemnation of greed as the defining vice of the thriving Massachusetts Bay Colony.
“Phillis Wheatley: A Black Perspective” by Eleanor Smith (1974)
A landmark examination of Wheatley by one of the foremost voices in the African American studies movement of the midcentury, this article examines why Wheatley is the only Black woman prominent in cultural studies of the era of the American Revolution. The article weighs Wheatley’s relationship to contemporary American Black women writers and to American Black culture itself.
“Phillis Wheatley: Simple Imitator or Cunning Abolitionist” by Casey Smith (2023)
This article takes a look at the century-long controversy over how to frame Wheatley’s achievement, exploring what to make of Wheatley with her studied and masterful imitations of inherited British poetic models. The article, which questions whether Wheatley surrendered to European culture at the expense of her African identity, uses “On Imagination” to show how subtly Wheatley uses accepted poetic forms to argue incendiary messages about the injustice and immorality of being enslaved.
Listen to the Poem
Although there are many readings of Wheatley’s poem available on YouTube, reflecting Wheatley’s reputation as one of the US’s earliest and most accomplished poets, the reading most in line with Wheatley’s theme of the soaring energy of the imagination is the recording by Read with Ursula. This reading teases out Wheatley’s careful sonic constructs, hits the hard consonants, relaxes into the long vowels, and pauses at dramatic moments. The middle stanzas are rendered with breathless excitement, and the closing stanza slows down and captures the bittersweet despair of the poet returning to winter. Specifically, Ursula lingers on the word “chill” by coaxing it into two syllables.
Related Titles
By Phillis Wheatley
