S1E3 - A Letter to Phillis Wheatley, Part 2
Season 1, Episode 3
Chi and Chad discuss the classical allusions in Wheatley’s poem, “To Maecenas.” Who was Maecenas? Why did Wheatley write a poem to him? And how should we interpret allusions?
Sources and references:
M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, “Allusion”
“Niobe in Distress for Her Children, Slain by Apollo”
“On Being Brought from Africa to America”
“On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield”
Alexander Pope, The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace
Mather Byles, “Written in Paradise Lost”
William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 3
Paula Bennett, “Phillis Wheatley's Vocation and the Paradox of the ‘Afric Muse’”
William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” p. 477
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism