Abstract:

This article examines the life and work of Phillis Wheatley and her interlocutors to consider how African-descended people conceptualized liberty and formed an intellectual community during the American Revolution. Her poetry and epistolary exchanges, shared with a range of acquaintances in the Atlantic World, reveal an intellectual universe that she created for herself and one that drew her into the political spotlight. Leaders of the founding generation began to question the intellectual possibilities for an African girl in ways that held political implications for the future of slavery. I argue that Wheatley's life and work opens critical avenues for exploring intellectualism as an aspiration of Black life in early America, and that her world of ideas sheds light on the possibilities of Black girlhood in the late eighteenth century.

摘要：

本文考察了菲利斯·惠特利和她的对话者的生活和工作，以思考非洲人后裔如何在美国革命期间概念化自由并形成知识分子群体。她与大西洋世界的一系列熟人分享的诗歌和书信交流，揭示了她为自己创造的知识世界，以及将她吸引到政治聚光灯下的知识世界。建国一代的领导人开始质疑非洲女孩的智力可能性，这对奴隶制的未来具有政治影响。我认为惠特利的生活和工作为探索理性主义作为早期美国黑人生活的愿望开辟了重要途径，她的思想世界揭示了十八世纪末黑人少女时代的可能性。