Re-membering America: Phyllis Wheatley's intertextual epic.

Though Phillis Wheatley's poetry has received considerable critical attention, much of the commentary on her work focuses on the problem of the "blackness," or lack thereof, of the first published African American woman poet. The issue of race occupies a privileged position in the interpretation of Wheatley's Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, and given the biases of Wheatley's period, which dictated authorial legitimation by prestigious white men, how Wheatley addressed her "marginalization" at the hands of her "masters" demands attention. Wheatley's critics are divided into two camps - those who contend that Wheatley critiques white oppression through the skillful use of biblical and classical references, and those who contend that Wheatley used her poetry to assimilate into the dominant culture. Scholars taking the former position include Sondra O'Neale, Houston Baker, James Levernier, and John Shields, while Phillip Richards figures most notably in the latter.

The matter of recognition is of crucial importance in Wheatley's poetry - but ample evidence in her body of work demonstrates that her call to be recognized as a mature poet and as an American subject (regardless of her race or sex) has not been sufficiently answered. For Shields, her more private poems - "To Maecenas," "On Imagination," "An Elegy on Leaving ---- -----," and "On Recollection," in particular - articulate her subversive message through her classicism. For Richards, her appropriation of Christian discourses in her more public poems, including her elegies, demonstrates her wish to assimilate into the Colonial American mainstream. Though O'Neale recognizes the subversive potential in Wheatley's use of Christian figures of discourse, the commentary on Wheatley has divided both the poet and her 1773 volume, leaving the reader with a private, classical, subversive poet, on the one hand, and a public, Christian, assimilationist writer, on the other - two vastly different "Wheatleys" constructed within the same volume with competing agendas. Although Wheatley adopts distinctly different voices in her Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, containing these voices within the categories of "assimilationist" or "rebel" does not form a complete picture of the poet. To the contrary, her self-referential refiguring of both European and African American subject positions in her poetry suggests an attempt to reconstruct narratives which place her at the margins of culture, left with the choice of either assimilation into the mainstream or rebellion against it.

The recognition of Wheatley's claim to artistic maturity and to "American-ness" depends on the recognition of the development and detournement of epic themes and motifs in Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, and in other texts, as she develops a distinctly American epic intertextually within the body of her work.(1) Though Wheatley did not attempt to create a neo-classical epic patterned after the Iliad or the Aeneid, or a Christian epic along the lines of Dante's Commedia or Milton's Paradise Lost, she nevertheless declares, in "To Maecenas," that she aspires to the same level of greatness as these authors, writing, "O could I rival . . . Virgil's page / Or claim the Muses with the Mantuan Sage" (Wheatley 10) - two references to Virgil (Oxford Classical Dictionary 936) - while in "A Hymn to the Morning" she invokes Calliope, the muse of epic poetry (Wheatley 56). Though one may read these invocations as ornament, a careful reading of Wheatley's works reveals that these calls echo across her entire work, transgressing the borderlines that divide each poem in her 1773 volume, and this volume from the remainder of her work. These calls announce pleas for transgression, a needed violation of the autonomy of the laws of genre which require other author(itie)s to authorize her work. Wheatley assumes a paradoxical task: to write an epic (the most legitimate and inviolable of genres) of illegitimacy and transgression.

Such a reading is not, at least according to Western standards, a reading of an "epic" at all. In "Epic and Novel," Mikhail Bakhtin identifies three "constitutive features" of the epic as a genre:

(1) a national epic past - in Goethe's and Schiller's terminology the "absolute past" - serves as the subject for the epic; (2) national tradition (not personal experience and the free thought that grows out of it) serves as the source for the epic; (3) an absolute epic distance separates the epic world from contemporary reality, that is, from the time in which the singer (the author and his audience) lives. (Bakhtin 13)

Under these conditions, the epic must lie "always already" in the cultural center. To figure a text as an epic is to presuppose a cultural essence which "demands" narration - a divinely sanctioned historico-cultural telos that prescribes the legitimacy and the destiny of epic heroes and the cultural elite from which they come. Additionally, the elevation of a subject to the status of epic hero creates a standard to measure others against, figuring a blueprint for an essential and divinely sanctioned social order.

What, for Wheatley, was to provide an "absolute past" which might serve as a foundation for narrating the experience of African Americans? Neither Wheatley nor other African Americans could define themselves as American subjects within the epics of their native Africa, while the epics of white Colonial America (from Beowulf to Paradise Lost to Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana) did not address the importance of African heritage, the experience as slaves in America, or the necessity of emancipation. The "otherness" of African Americans was absolute. They remained at the margins of Colonial culture, without a cultural identity or a voice to express it. The rupture caused by their abduction and subsequent enslavement left African Americans with a cultural past which could not address the culture of their present, and a present culture which denied the legitimacy of the culture of their past. Wheatley could not write an African American epic while respecting the conventions that Bakhtin enumerates. The absolute past, the absolute distance which it creates, and a national tradition were denied to Colonial African Americans. Denying the essence and the center to Wheatley left her with borderlines, the spaces in which ruptures occur.

If traditional, centristic epic themes of Western and African culture could not address the complexity of African American experience or critique the injustice of slavery, what type of "epic" could Phillis Wheatley create? How could she compose an "epic" of the margin? "Snatching a laurel" and "rivaling. Virgil's page" were not within her grasp, she could not write an epic according to Western standards. Indeed, Wheatley acknowledges this "marginalization" in "To Maecenas," stating, "But I less happy, cannot raise the song, / The fault'ring music dies upon my tongue" (11). Virgil, an educated, property-owning Roman citizen, positions himself unproblematically in the center of his culture. Additionally, Virgil composed the Aeneid in the native Latin of his audience. Wheatley, however, could not position herself in the center of Colonial culture, not within the terms of white Colonial culture. As a slave, both the language and forms in which she wrote were not those of her native Africa but those of the dominant culture. For Wheatley, "American-ness" was not something which she had possessed since birth. To the contrary, it was a goal which she could not attain, if to be "American" was to assimilate into the dominant culture. As Wheatley's February 14, 1777, letter to Samson Occum shows, white Colonial America had shown it was unwilling to define "Africans" as full human subjects, let alone as citizens of a future republic.(2) The dominant culture's words and actions placed "Africans" indefinitely at the margins. Denied entrance into the space of "legitimate" Colonial culture, Wheatley could only re-cite the marks of "belonging" by adopting Western forms, and using biblical and classical imagery, showing that she had accumulated a sufficient stock of cultural capital to be considered the equal of her white "betters." If she could not write a "legitimate" epic, it was possible to re-petition and re-cite the generic markers of the epic as a genre, the stylistic traits which indicate that the text "belongs" to the genre, such as the invocation of Calliope or the use of an epic simile or elevated style.

Re-marking from without, re-petitioning a law which declared that Wheatley lacked the marks of belonging, requires her to parody these marks and the laws to which they refer. To use Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s terms, it required an act of signifyin(g),(3) a performance on/in the epic and the "absolute" and "essential" nature of its laws, both generic and cultural. Signifyin(g) on a genre involves transgression. Repeating the marks of a genre while remaining "outside" what had been declared as the proper boundaries of that genre (such as invoking Calliope during a hymn which, apparently, was not part of any epic narrative) would require a poaching raid of sorts, a stealing of signs. To bring something back from this raid and to re- install it elsewhere would be to disobey the first "law" of genre - that, as Jacques Derrida writes in "The Law of Genre," "genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix genres. I repeat: genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix them" (223). When Wheatley repeats figures of epic discourse within her poem, she enacts the same economy noted by Derrida, where the recitation and re-petition of the "mark" of generic status (i.e., the "mark" of the "law") simultaneously re-cite "essential disruptions" of the law that grants generic status (226). A "legal" citation implies "all sorts of contextual conventions . . . and protocols in the mode of reiteration . . . such as quotation marks or other typographical devices" (226). Without such markers (and even with them, in Wheatley's case),

. . . the law that protects the usage, in stricto sensu, of the words citation and recit, is threatened immediately and in advance by a counterlaw that constitutes this very law, renders it possible, conditions it and thereby makes itself - for reasons of edges on which we shall run around in just a moment - impossible to edge through, to edge away from or to hedge around. (Derrida, "Law" 226)

Even with proper precautions and protocols, there is no assuredly "legal" recitation, as "the law and the counterlaw serve each other citations summoning each other to appear . . . [as] each re-cites the other in these proceedings" ("Law" 226). There is no assurance that Wheatley's re- citations are legal - to the contrary, if she is read as signifyin(g) on these "laws," her recitation must be read as infiltrating/disrupting the generic integrity that they enforce.

By filling her poetry with "unauthorized" re-citations and disobeying the command not to mix genres, Wheatley exploits the "epic" potential of Derrida's "internal fold," the "pocket inside the corpus," caused by the economy of the law of genre. According to Derrida, those marks of belonging to a genre are always, a priori, re-markable; their status as signifiers of membership comes from their reinscription, whether "legitimate" or "illegitimate" ("Law" 229). Additionally, the mark does not "belong" to that genre which it announces; the mark is not the "essence" of the genre, or the genre itself, but rather the trait which identifies it. The mark is supplementary to the genre, but, paradoxically, it is precisely the means by which the text makes the claim to belonging. For Derrida, "In marking itself generically, the text unmarks itself (se demarque). If remarks of belonging belong without belonging, participate without belonging, then genre-designations cannot be simply part of the corpus" ("Law" 230). The free use of unauthorized re-marks of the epic enabled Wheatley to unveil the process of self-unmarking enacted by the claim to generic status.

The re-marks of belonging that Wheatley "poached" are: (1) the statement of the theme and the invocation of a muse, (2) the figure of an epic hero of national importance who represents the "essence" of the culture, (3) the opening of the narrative in medias res, in the middle of the action, with any necessary exposition coming at later points in the work, (4) the inclusion of epic hymns, (5) the presence of supernatural forces in the narrative, and (6) the vast scope of the narrative.

If Wheatley is writing an "epic" of transgression, then it would be appropriate for readers to examine the opening poem in Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, "To Maecenas," in which she claims that she will snatch the laurel and strive to equal Virgil. In" 'To Maecenas': Phillis Wheatley's Invocation of an Idealized Reader," Cynthia J. Smith reads the opening poem of Wheatley's 1773 volume as a statement of artistic autonomy in which the author posits an ideal patron/reader who is not biased by racial and sexual prejudices. Though Smith's reading is insightful, her analysis places Wheatley's work within a limited frame. Reading the poem as making "a plea for the right kind of reader" (Smith 590), on behalf of a Wheatley

concerned about the survival of her work, proudly wishes it to survive as the work of an African writer. "To Maecenas" shows that she considered herself a full-fledged participant in the poetic tradition of Western writing and, denied the opportunity to speak out uncensored - as this poem readily demonstrates - to the renowned readers, the Maecenases of the past. (590)

Smith creates an anachronistic Wheatley who accepts that she must write out of her time, into an idealized past, in order to be heard. This Wheatley has little to say to her contemporary audience, except that they lack the breadth of vision to appreciate her work, and that she deserves a new Maecenas who can recognize her talent. Though this move creates an empowering voice for Wheatley, it silences her in the same stroke by sending her call "backward" into a non-existent, idealized past, directing her call away from audiences of her own historical moment. This assessment of Smith's essay is perhaps overly harsh, but the question of to whom Wheatley's call is directed, and why, deserves further attention.

The historical Maecenas was the patron of Ovid, Horace, and Virgil (Oxford Classical Dictionary 636) and, as Smith notes, was the center of "an elite literary circle" which included also Varius, Plotius, and Quintillius (Smith 580). However, the historical Maecenas's significance was not strictly literary: He was by turns a soldier, poet, and diplomat, serving at one time as the "diplomatic right hand of Caesar Augustus" (Oxford Classical Dictionary 527; Smith 580). As such, it would not be inaccurate to read him as an exemplary figure in Roman culture, an embodiment of pietas, or virtue - fidelity to the country, the family, and the gods(4) (Oxford Classical Dictionary 692). Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to disregard the considerable cultural political power that Maecenas must have possessed, as a patron capable of canonizing/legitimizing a work by means of his support and influence. When Wheatley writes "What felt those poets but you feel the same? / Does not your soul possess the sacred flame?" (9) in the opening stanza of "To Maecenas," the political aspects of the patron/poet relationship are suggested, underneath the aesthetic relationship which Smith identifies as taking place within the poem. By possessing the "sacred flame," Maecenas not only holds the "poetic fire" that creates and inspires, but also the power to canonize and mark as sacred, certifying a work as aesthetically and culturally legitimate.

By placing the "sacred flame" of legitimation and authority within Maecenas's soul, Wheatley implies a relationship between the flame and pietas, following the necessary intertwining in the latter of the civic (exercising political and poetic patronage to those who were loyal to the "fatherland") and the religious (granting patronage to those who maintained reverence to the gods), indicating that Maecenas's patronage cannot be separated from either his duty to the country or to the gods. This relationship marks both as figures of virtue - Maecenas by his patronage of the national poet, and Virgil by his writing the national poem.

By suggesting the relationship between pietas and the creation and the reception/canonization of epic poetry, Wheatley announces one of the principal themes of her "epic." Wheatley had her own patron in Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, but although Hastings financed the production of Wheatley's 1773 volume, it was the board of the "most respectable characters in Boston" - those who possessed the most cultural/political influence - who authenticated her work. In effect, Wheatley had multiple patrons, with Hastings and the "most respectable characters in Boston" providing financial and political patronage. However, their support of Wheatley was significantly more patronizing than that offered to Virgil. Virgil's work may have been "certified" by Maecenas, but this cultural certification did not concern itself overtly with the "authenticity" of Virgil's text, as his authorship was never in doubt. Although Virgil, to a certain extent, depended on his patron Maecenas to authorize his text and recognize him as a legitimate poet, there is a significant difference between his experience and Wheatley's. Whereas Virgil could be recognized as a cultural peer of his patron, Wheatley was recognized as a second-class poet (hence the comments of Thomas Jefferson, who doubtless spoke for other members of the white elite when he called her work "beneath the dignity of criticism" (Jefferson 62) and not as a second-class subject. As Smith suggests, Wheatley indeed desired a new Maecenas who would recognize her both as a poet and a legitimate subject. However, if readers approach her performance as an act of signifyin(g), a performance on/in the practice of patronage, a different Wheatley arises - one who, rather than merely lamenting her marginalization, chooses to rewrite herself as her own patron. By signifyin(g) on Maecenas, she can both praise and mock Maecenas at once, lauding his support of and aesthetic fellowship with his proteges, while assuming his position as she patronizes/certifies her own discourse by writing that "Maecenas" will ". . . indulgent[ly] smile upon the deed" as she snatches her laurel (12). However, both her call for and declaration of belonging are delivered at a remove, from underneath masks, and are sent to other masks in turn. If Shields is correct in his assertion that, by "snatching a laurel," Wheatley was donning a mask to deliver a subversive message ("Phillis Wheatley's Subversion" 2), then the "Wheatley" that speaks is not really Wheatley at all - that is, if her poetic voice is to be read either as a parody of white culture or as one that refuses to be so - but a parody of Wheatley(s), a parody of a parody. In turn, she directs her call to another parody - the "Maecenas" upon which she signifies.

Within this space of masks and parodies, the lines of demarcation that separate the poet from the patron collapse as Wheatley repeats the marks/positions of patron and poet, raising the question of who, exactly, authorizes this text, who "belongs" as its author? The final line, "Hear me propitious, and defend my lays" (12), apparently marks the author Wheatley, and the patron Maecenas - but which "Wheatley," and which "Maecenas"? By appropriating the masks of both poet and patron in the poem, Wheatley triggers a play of parodies and tropes that denies any conclusion. This denial, however, responds to her real-life patrons/authenticators, refusing them the power to name and mark her, to either grant or deny membership or belonging. In the rhetorical relationship Wheatley performs on/in, it is impossible to identify who "belongs."

The impossibility of categorization is the first theme Wheatley develops in her "epic." As the "national myth," the function of the epic is to define who the members of the nation were, and by what marks they were to be identified. For Wheatley, there can be no method for determining who is a "member" of the culture and who is an "other" - rather, the two positions re-cite each other constantly and indefinitely. This subversive refusal to accept the taxonomies of a culture that marks her as "other" signifies "assimilation" here as well, since she cannot place herself outside the narratives she re-cites. Signifyin(g) on the narratives of belonging requires participation in the "culture," even if it is not the culture that her masters construct. For Wheatley, all Colonial Americans are "equal," precisely because definitions of equivalency or difference cannot be established.

Wheatley's interrogation of dominant notions of who "belongs" within the boundary lines of "American-ness" is evident in four poems - "On Being Brought From Africa to America," "To the University of Cambridge, in New England," "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North America, &c," and "To His Honour the Lieutenant Governor, on the Death of His Lady. March 24, 1773." In each poem, Wheatley makes explicit her African "marginality" while issuing correctives to her audience. Her repetition of Colonial marks of "blackness" occur in contexts that question their capacity to perform their intended function and the validity of the taxonomic order these marks establish.

In "On Being Brought From Africa to America," Wheatley writes,

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. (18)

Through the poem seems to position "Africans" as inferior to their white "masters," with "unrefined" and "Pagan" Africans needing re-marking by whites, and by the "grace" of white Christianity, the unqualified repetition of marks in line 7, "Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain," suggests another interpretation. The line begins with a call for Wheatley's audience to repeat, to "Remember" - and the importance of memory as a tropological/mimetic function is an important theme throughout Wheatley's Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, as the following discussion of her elegies and of her "On Recollection" will show. What her audience is to repeat and re-cite are the marks "Christians," "Negros," and "black as Cain." However, these marks are not repeated with any qualification. Although "Christians" may be read as an address to the audience, there is nothing that distances the category "Christians" from "Negros" - no dash or full colon (which would not violate the meter of the line as would a "that" between the two categories) separates the command, "Remember, Christians," from the statement "Negros, black as Cain, / May be refined and join th' angelic train." Without qualification the reader is left with a verb, "Remember," and the categories "Christians," "Negros," and "black as Cain." Without a qualifying order the reader is left to "Re-member: Christians/Negros/black as Cain," an operation which un-marks as it remarks, leaving three categories which infiltrate each other and apparently mock themselves as definitive marks. The only qualifying order which appears is that all three categories "May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train."

Given the rhetorical ambiguity of the final couplet, it is not an imposition on the text to read the poem as an act of signification. Wheatley signifies on the rhetorical posture of the "inferior" poet addressing her "superior" audience, upsetting the order of marks which claims that "Africans" need to be refined by their American betters. The disruption of categories in the final couplet marks Christians/Negros/black as Cain as all in need of spiritual refinement in this world, requiring the re-membering of the "original" subject. As this couplet resonates with others, the former pupil Wheatley instructs her former religious instructors in how to become "proper" Christians. "Belonging" cannot be achieved on Earth, but only after one has joined the "angelic train." As a result, one cannot say that either African or European Americans "belong" in Christian culture. One can only practice "belonging" in Christianity, and racial "marks" cannot determine who practices this process. A similar disruption of taxonomic order occurs which she (un)marks herself as an "Afric" or an "Ethiop." The mark of "marginality" is juxtaposed against the pronounced "central" position the poet's voice assumes vis-a-vis her audience, undermining the order which establishes a "center" and a "margin" for Colonial culture.

In the second stanza of "To Maecenas," Wheatley introduces a second theme in her "epic" when she praises Homer and closes with two couplets concerning his heroes Achilles and Patroclus:

When great Patroclus courts Achilles' aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love And stern Pelides tendr'st passions move.(10)

Wheatley covers the entire episode of the death of Patroclus in a single line. "Patroclus courts Achilles' aid" could refer either to the donning of Achilles' armor (the appropriation of the "marks" of Achilles) before "he" rejoins the battle against the Trojans, or to the notion that Patroclus attempted to use his dissimulation of Achilles to reconcile him with Agamemnon, or to both. In either instance, Patroclus uses an imitative performance for a political purpose - to unify the Greeks to defeat Troy. Patroclus is killed as he signifies on Achilles, the Myrmidons, and the remainder of the Greek army, prompting the rage of Achilles. Wheatley does not show this part of Homer's narrative, substituting Achilles' mourning for "their" rage. Her appropriation of the Homeric narrative ends not with the killing of Hector outside the walls of Troy, or even with the reconciliation between Priam and Achilles. Rather, she "closes" Homer by presenting Achilles "Prone on the shore [feeling] the pangs of love." Achilles mourns the irrecoverable loss of the man who signified/supplemented Achilles by repeating "his" marks. Wheatley leaves her reader with Achilles mourning himself and his other simultaneously. She rewrites Homer's epic hero as a figure for mourning, making mourning heroic in the process. Wheatley's epic hero mourns the loss of his "self" and his "other," while representing his heroic qualities (his arete, or virtue) in this act. Mourning becomes implicated with arete, making the mourning of the remains of his peer an obligation that must be performed out of respect for the "other."

Despite the references to Virgil, Wheatley never figures Aeneas in the entire body of her work. Her representative from the world of the classical epic is her mourning Achilles, the arche-type of epic hero that is to be repeated and refigured. Figuring of the hero in this manner effects a displacement of the location of the epic hero in his social structure. The dissimulation and signifyin(g) of her Patroclus continues the re-marking and re-citing initiated in "To Maecenas." However, if the status of "Achilles" and "Patroclus" as definitive marks is called into question, the relationship of Achilles' mourning to his arete changes significantly. In Homer's narrative Achilles mourns Patroclus as a peer, and the obligation to mourn does not extend outside the circle of male warrior aristocrats. Wheatley, however, calls into question the markers "Achilles" and "Patroclus." When Patroclus dons his mask of signification - the armor of his "patron" Achilles - the taxonomic order that establishes their positions relative to each other and to their society collapses within itself, making the matter of peerage impossible to establish. For Wheatley, Achilles' mourning is unconditional, no longer an obligation of class and gender. Both he and Patroclus are "others" that do not "properly" belong to any category, irrecoverable others who share a relationship to each other that is at once both fundamentally symmetrical and asymmetrical, and whose duty is to mourn the other as that which lies outside the bounds of belonging. Wheatley thus figures an arche-type for the "epic" hero that will be re-cited and re- typed as she writes her Americans in Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. The pun in the title should not be missed: The vast majority of her poems concern themselves with the women and men in Colonial Boston that Wheatley refigures, like her Achilles, as "mourners" and figures for heroic virtue. For Wheatley and her "various subjects," the unconditional duty to mourn becomes the American equivalent to pietas or arete in her "epic," marking participation in "American-ness." For Wheatley, to become "American" is to respond to the call to mourn and respect the other's "remains."

In The Philosophy of the Limit, Drucilla Cornell connects the duty of mourning to the work of Walter Benjamin's chiffonier.(5) In the effort to figure an "ethical relationship" to the other, Cornell tropes on Benjamin's person at the margins of industrial capitalist culture, re-placing her for rhetorical purposes in an ethically privileged position. Following Derrida, Cornell denies the existence of a center, a space of absolute and essential belonging. Because nothing and no one can "belong," all persons in culture are "marginal" - not, in any absolute sense, occupying the spaces within the boundaries of the category "belonging." To mourn is to defer to the "otherness" of the Other, as Derrida

has also shown an "individual" ethical commitment to take responsibility both for the Other and for his own signature as he engages with and signs for the Other. . . . He signs for the role he has played in reading the Other. The very recognition of the precedence of the Other, also means that the Other is dependent on me. Derrida takes responsibility for whom he makes the Other become when he reads her. (Cornell 82)

Cornell's ethical mourners become chiffoniers as they re-collect the traces of the "Other," gathering and re-membering fragments of identities. To re- present the Other in discourse requires gathering together his traces, miming him, a process that is "always already" reciprocal and parodic. Figuring mourning as the first duty of her "epic" hero, Wheatley declares that her readers must engage in a similar, if not identical, process to negotiate "her" and her "text." By rewriting Achilles into a mourner/chiffonier, Wheatley rewrites the scavenger on the "outside" of the culture as the ideal - a space in which she will write herselves as her "epic" develops. Wheatley's status as a mourner/chiffonier, meanwhile, was not only a matter of metaphor - her cultural disenfranchisement as a slave required her to salvage the bits and pieces of both her African memories and her informal Colonial education to perform cultural identities. Like Benjamin's figure, she did not have unlimited access to culture, and was forced to make "intelligent choices" from available figures of discourse.

Mourning/recollection is the virtue of Wheatley's "epic" hero, and the unconditional respect for the Other is the second major theme in her narrative. Where Aeneas's "Romanness" obligates him to express love and respect for the gods, the Fatherland, and the family, Wheatley requires "epic" figures to love and respect only the Other to "belong" to her culture. In "To Maecenas" Wheatley implies that she is such a figure when she refers to her own mourning for the Homeric heroes in line 17, where "The grateful tribute of my [Wheatley's] tears is paid" to both Achilles and Patroclus (10). As a result, Wheatley's signifyin(g) on Achilles marks her as one hero(es) in her "epic" - as a re-collector of Others and of "Wheatleys," "epic" figures all. Wheatley's epic tells of "becoming" American as she re-collects the traces of Others - a process in which her readers must engage if they answer her call for recognition as an Other. She closes "To Maecenas" with this call, writing, "Then grant, Maecenas, thy paternal rays, / Hear me propitious, and defend my lays" (12).

Wheatley's attempt to perform the ethical relation to the Other and become an American in the process is evident in her elegies. Though these poems present her most "Christianized" work, it is not appropriate to read them as "assimilationist" texts. To the contrary, Wheatley's elegies exhibit a self-reflexive rhetoricity which emphasizes the importance of difference and of Otherness, and which attempts to realize a redemptive vision through the re-cognition of differences. Signifyin(g) on the elegy provided Wheatley with a means of articulating a social vision in her poetry - the elegy was the most "public" of the genres in which Wheatley participates - and providing an accepted and established medium to perform in/on her white Others. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines the elegy as the form in which ". . . the emotion [caused by the recognition of a death], originally expressed as a lament, finds consolation in the contemplation of some permanent principle" (215), and this "permanent principle" becomes the basis for a code which dictates how the audience is to "accept" death, and practice life as well. The form is by nature didactic, and its use of a "permanent principle" presupposes an essential justification for the poet's address to the audience, an address which restores an essential justification for why individual conduct is ordered in a particular way. Additionally, the invocation of this "permanent principle" sublates difference (as manifested in the audience's grief) in the name of a greater power - God, Nature, Nation, etc. To Shields, eighteenth-century American pastoral and funeral elegies "preserve the memory of the departed as they attempt to reclaim a measure of the loss to the living; when taken as a collective whole, these poems enact an attempt on the part of eighteenth-century Americans to trace the memory of their culture and to minimize the loss of their past" (American Aeneas 223). Wheatley's elegies perform these functions, though not in the same manner as those of her white contemporaries: To "minimize the loss" of her past, Wheatley had to reclaim her African roots and her "American-ness."

Wheatley's effort to reclaim her remains (her past, and her status as the "remainder" in Colonial culture), like her effort to reclaim patronage, relies on parody, repetition, and the textual "doublings" that the two processes bring about. The funeral elegy's function in the Puritan tradition was to repeat a figure of the lost Other, but only in the context of that figure's sublation; there could be no remainder and no supplement if all the elements in the poem were placed within the system of Christian doctrine. Though Wheatley's elegies offer the appearance of reinscribing the drives to closure and totalization of traditional Christian discourses, there are parodic elements in her elegies that are not contained by the traditional Christian system, and remain "outside" any named category - supplemental traces that threaten the integrity and "legitimacy" of the Christian construct. Read as acts of signification by Wheatley, the long speeches (an epic construction) that occur in several of her elegies - "On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell. 1769," "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield. 1770," "On the death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age," "A funeral Poem on the Death of C.E. an Infant of Twelve Months," and "To the Honourable T.H. Esq; on the Death of his Daughter" - produce supplemental Others/Wheatleys that cannot be recovered by extending Christian structures.

The first appearance of a supplemental voice in an elegy occurs in the third stanza of "On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell. 1769," in which the following scene takes place:

"Sewell is dead." Swift-pinion'd Fame thus cry'd. "Is Sewell dead," my trembling tongue reply'd, O what a blessing in his flight deny'd! How oft for us the holy prophet pray'd! How oft to us the Word of Life convey'd! By duty urg'd my mournful verse to close, I for his tomb this epitaph compose. (20)

In the second line, "Wheatley" repeats the utterance of "Fame," calling into question the authority of public "Fame" by reversing the original syntax, making a definitive statement a question. The voice of consensus cannot communicate the truth of death, for how can an "entity" without body comprehend the loss of life? Only an embodied subject can mourn, recognizing death as that which ". . . belies the myth of full presence, and foils our human attempts to ultimately control our fate" (Cornell 56). Wheatley acknowledges the public's call, but signifies on it because the standards that would qualify eighteenth-century discourse as "public" and not "private" - that it be objective, that it meet objective standards of truth, that, in effect, it must be "authorless" so that it would be true no matter who its "author" was - prevent such discourse from truly communicating that "Sewell is dead." Wheatley takes this task upon herself as she composes the elegy that can communicate the "truth" of Sewell's death.

If Wheatley's elegy, and the epitaph it contains, are read as "true," they must also be read as supplemental - to the public discourse on Sewell and, paradoxically, to her poem and epitaph. There is an apparent contradiction here, at least by eighteenth-century European standards. The true (which is essential and cannot be questioned) cannot coexist with its false double, the supplement. However, the statement which opens Wheatley's "true" work of mourning - "Sewell is dead" - duplicates the "false" text of Fame/the public voice, even if this duplication occurs with a difference. Additionally, this true statement is not a statement, but a question: "Is Sewell dead?" A question should lead one to the truth; it should not be the truth. Here, however, the supplement is the true, the "original," and the question that cannot be answered is the answer; for how can one "know" death except as an unknown? The only "Word[s] of Life" that Wheatley can convey are, "Is Sewell dead?"

Wheatley obeys the call which "urg'd my mournful verse to close," but what closure Wheatley attempts is unclear. Does she close Sewell's prayer for his congregation, his "Word[s] of Life," or simply the elegy itself? It appears that she signifies on Sewell's position as minister, as her elegy becomes a prayer for Sewell and his/her audience - she assumes Sewell's role to "finish" his work. The roles of poet and minister fold into each other, as it becomes the duty of both to deliver the "Word[s] of Life" to the community. Though Wheatley attempts to "sign for" Sewell and "finish" his words, she cannot completely interiorize him, or negate his "Otherness." To the contrary, she can only re-cite his traces, and only through this process can she become "Wheatley." Wheatley becomes a self to Sewell by mourning him, and she only becomes a self to others by recognizing the possibility of mourning them as well. According to Derrida,

We know, we knew, we remember - before the death of the loved one - that being-in-me or being-in-us is constituted out of the possibility of mourning. We are ourselves from the perspective of this knowledge that is older than ourselves; and this is why I say that we begin by recalling this to ourselves: we come to ourselves only through the memory of possible mourning. (Memoires 58)

Wheatley completes mourning Sewell by "signing for" him, while simultaneously calling for her audience to recognize the possibility of mourning Others - among which one could count Wheatley herself. The long speech comprising the final stanza is set off in quotation marks, and though Wheatley has written "I for his tomb this epitaph compose" in the previous stanza, nothing marks the subsequent speech as this epitaph, or certifies that the words are Wheatley's. Though the pronoun I is used in the following stanza, there is no announcement of who this "I" is. The quotation marks which surround the stanza are not marks of authorship, as the reader is never told who is speaking. The stanza is, of course, Wheatley's signature for Sewell, but the absence of any proof of authorship makes it an Other's signature for Sewell as well, a signature which in turn becomes a signature for Wheatley, her "closing" of Sewell's work. The long "epitaph" concludes,

"Mourn him, ye youth, to whom he oft has told "God's gracious wonders from the times of old. "I, too, have cause for this mighty loss to mourn, "For he my monitor will not return. "O when shall we to his blest state arrive? "When the same graces in our bosoms thrive." (21)

It cannot be determined who is delivering this conclusion, or even who is being re-membered. It could be Wheatley speaking for Sewell, but there are no marks present to authorize this reading. The reader is only aware that one "Other" mourns another. This "Other" is supplemental to Wheatley, and this voice dialogizes Wheatley's text, making her an "Other" and subverting her authority. In turn, the reader is also "Other" to the speaker, raising the possibility that the reader is mourned here, making this speech a eulogy for the reader that has yet to be delivered. This epitaph without an author is a supplement for the lost Other, miming "him" as he is recollected. Nothing follows this long speech; the poem closes on this equally recollective and speculative note, leaving the reader with nothing more than the obligation to mourn and recognize the possibility of mourning that has not yet taken place. To fulfill this obligation, however, the reader must follow Wheatley's example, and signify on the codes which mark subjects of the dominant culture. The reader must parody herself, and resign herself to the task of recollecting the remains of Others so that she can re-collect her own "self."

In "To the Honorable T.H. Esq; on the Death of his Daughter," Wheatley calls her reader's attention to this process of self re-collection, writing,

While deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow, And racks your bosom with incessant woe, Let Recollection take a tender part, Assuage the raging tortures of your heart, Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief, And pour the heav'nly nectar of relief. (98)

That she emphasizes "Recollection" is of note, since this poem is preceded in Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by her hymn "On Recollection," suggesting that the reader undergo the same process of self-miming and recollecting enacted in that poem. It also suggests that the two poems are intertexts of each other. If this suggestion is extended to all of Wheatley's poems which concern themselves with re-membering and recollecting as redemptive activities, the possibility arises that Wheatley's 1773 volume is a self-reflexive, cyclical text which repeats the theme(s) of re-membering. Mourning is certainly one of these, while "belonging" is another. The two are implicated in each other, because one participates in Wheatley's Christian "belonging" by re-membering an Other - as in "On Being Brought From Africa to America" or "To the University of Cambridge, in New England" - and as her Christian mourning requires the same act. Her volume repeats calls for and re-cites narratives of "becoming" ethical and spiritual subjects in Colonial America. Hers is the most prominent, but not the only, one. Wheatley, the numerous "Ladies" who have lost husbands and children (including Wheatley's (re)visioned Niobe in "Niobe in Distress"), Sewell, and T.H. Esq. are the heroes and heroines of Wheatley's "epic," paradigmatic figures of Wheatley's "America." For Wheatley, the "golden age" of American culture was the present - there was no epic distance separating it from her - even though the culture needed a Wheatley to make it evident.

After "To Maecenas" opens Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, with the call to the muses and the statement of the theme(s), Wheatley's narratives begin their cycle(s) with "On Virtue," followed by "To the University of Cambridge, in New England," "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty," "On Being Brought From Africa to America," and the elegy on Sewell. These first five poems present the genres in which Wheatley participates - the hymn and the elegy - while treating the major themes of her "epic," the re-membering of the self and the Other. Though "To Maecenas" introduces the volume, there is no other source of exposition for the reader. Without any background on Wheatley or any of the other subjects in her "epic," the reader begins in medias res, in the middle of Wheatley's performance of "belonging." If to perform "belonging" is to participate in "becoming" American, then the process cannot correspond to any linear order. The end of each process is continually deferred - one only belongs in the Christian heaven after "join[ing] th' angelic train," while the Reverend Whitefield, among others, becomes American only when he is remembered by Wheatley - while the regenerative aspects of constantly remembering the self make the positing of a "beginning" of the process impossible. Once the reader enters Wheatley's text(s), points of beginning and ending cannot be identified (and without these points, there is no proper middle either), leaving the reader in the "middle" of repeating and re-membering the traces of "past," "present," and "future" moments in the narrative(s). As a result, Wheatley's "epic" signifies on the temporal order that beginning in medias res would establish. Signifyin(g) on her "past" critiques the notion that she, or anyone else, does not belong in American culture by virtue of their "alien" past, because once one has entered into the process of "becoming" American, one's "origin" no longer serves as a teleological mark. Wheatley's African-ness is important as a mark of her "Otherness," and her exploitation of this mark for strategic and rhetorical purposes has been noted, but this mark becomes of strategic and rhetorical importance only as it is re-marked/repeated by Wheatley as she "becomes" an African American.

Wheatley's "becoming" and "belonging" are realized through memory/repetition. It follows that three of Wheatley's poems that signify on the epic hymn concern themselves with this mimetic process - "Thoughts on the Works of Providence," "On Recollection," and "On Imagination." In "'That Undisturbed Song of Pure Content': Paradise Lost and the Epic-Hymn," Francis C. Blessington identifies the epic hymn as an important element in classical epics, particularly the Aeneid, and investigates its influence on Milton's text. The classical epic hymn was a paean to a god or goddess who occupied an important role in the narrative, while Milton's poem is, of course, written for the glorification of God. Though only "Thoughts on the Works of Providence" concerns itself directly with the celebration of God and of God's works, all of the above poems extend Wheatley's discourse on her re- membered Christianity. Though "On Recollection" and "On Imagination" do not celebrate God per se, they celebrate Wheatley's re-collecting of the images of God and her self. Both poems extend her religious thought through their concern with the process of "becoming" an ethical subject who can enter into ethical relations with Others, relations in which subjects participate in Christianity, though not in a Christian system. Additionally, both poems signify on the genre of the classical epic hymn through Wheatley's deification of "recollection" and "imagination" - she represents "recollection" as the muse Mnemosyne (who assumes a goddess-like position in the poem), while marking "imagination" as the "imperial queen" (Wheatley 65). These three poems are "hymns" to the means by which her "God" can be repeated and re-cited. As there can be no completion of the work of "becoming" Christian, or of that of "knowing" a God who can only be re-cited, the processes of recollection mark the limit of Wheatley's Christianity. Wheatley celebrates the means of re-citing God because that is the proper limit of mortal minds. Her signifyin(g) on God at a remove in these poems is not an act of hubris, but devotion.

While different readers note Milton and Virgil as influences on Wheatley, only the classical aspects of her epic hymn will be examined here. Concerning the classical epic hymn, Blessington writes,

The epic hymn functions throughout the epic tradition as an antithesis to the epic narrative, a pause in the action in order to acknowledge the ideal toward which the epic struggles. The epic hymn is a lyric that celebrates a moment of solemn relief from the inexorable action related in the narrative and dramatic structures, a moment without the movement of narrative time, an escape into an ideal world. (472-73)

Though Wheatley's hymns follow Blessington's structure, her hymns do not offer an "antithesis" to her epic narrative(s), a "relief from the inexorable action," or a moment "without the movement of narrative time." Because Wheatley's "epic" does not rely on a linear narrative structure, her hymns do not constitute spaces "outside" of her "epic." Rather, they become moments in the narrative(s) of Phillis Wheatley(s), integral and critical elements in her "epic." However, they do represent forms of "an escape into an ideal world," as it is within her poetry that Wheatley writes herself as "becoming" American. Her call for recognition as an American subject comes from an ideal world, but is sent with the possibility that this ideal world will become actual. If her call is properly read and responded to, her audience will recognize her as "belonging" and "becoming" American, as the reader relates ethically to Wheatley as an Other.

The first and longest of Wheatley's hymns is "Thoughts on the Works of Providence." Here Wheatley introduces the themes that she develops further in other hymns - the importance played by memory in acting ethically, the reclaiming of black/night imagery, the re-membering of the self, and the religious justification for each of these. Wheatley begins this hymn with her invocation of God and her muse, calling on the former to aid in her life and the latter in her art, writing,

Arise, my soul, on wings enraptur'd, rise To praise the monarch of the earth and skies, Whose goodness and beneficence appear As round its centre moves the rolling year, Or when the morning glows with rosy charms, Or the sun slumbers in the ocean's arms: Of light divine be a rich portion lent To guide my soul and favor my intent. Celestial muse, my arduous flight sustain, And raise my mind to a seraphic strain! (43)

In the next stanza, Wheatley states that her "monarch of the earth and skies" is "the God unseen" (43), suggesting that God cannot be "known," only accepted/re-cited unconditionally, as a matter of faith. In turn, any duty or obligation to God must be accepted unconditionally - and as Wheatley's ethical relation to the Other is inextricably linked to her Christianity, her audience must fulfill this obligation as a matter of faith. It would appear, however, that many Christians in Wheatley's audience have not fulfilled this obligation, as Wheatley states in the third stanza,

Almighty, in these wondr'ous works of thine, What Pow'r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine? And are thy wonders, Lord, by men explor'd, And yet creating glory unador'd! (44)

Wheatley suggests in this stanza that persons have taken it upon themselves to "explore" God's works without respecting the "Otherness" of these other parts of God's creation. That some have left "creating glory unador'd" suggests that many have not paid proper respect and deference to God's intention, the "Pow'r," "Wisdom," and "Goodness" He expresses through His works. "Explor'd" certainly suggests the exploration and conquest of lands and peoples by European "men," and the resonance of this suggestion carries on to the notion of abuse as well - the abuse of Others for men's, and not God's, "creating glory."

If the anti-slavery and anti-racist resonances of this stanza escape the attention of some readers, Wheatley tropes on this theme again in the next stanza, in which

Without them [God's "solar rays"], destitute of heat and light, This world would be the reign of endless night: In their excess how would our race complain, Abhorring life! how hate its length'ned chain! From the air adust what num'rous ills would rise? What dire contagion taint the burning skies? What pestilential vapours, fraught with death, Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath? (44-45)

The opening line includes the first of many allusions to the beauty of the diversity of God's work, as "Creation smiles in various beauty gay," while the second line presents day and night as reciprocal and necessary elements in God's plan, critiquing the values assigned to dark/black and light/white in traditional imagery. Neither is in any way superior to the other in this instance, for although the lack of "solar rays" would result in "the reign of endless night," their "excess" results in an equally undesirable outcome. Too much light/white causes "our race [to] complain,/Abhorring life! how hate its length'ned chain!" - the chain of slavery, certainly. Though one line shows the dangers in "unending" night, the remainder of the stanza illustrates the ills of too much light/white. The stanza is a subtly veiled critique of racial prejudice in Colonial culture - God's work in America requires dark/black and light/white to work together in a reciprocal, equal capacity, and giving undue weight to any of God's diverse creations results in disaster. Wheatley continues along this line in the next stanza, praising the beauty of difference as "So rich, so various are thy [God's] beauteous dies" (45) - a reply of sorts to the voice in "On Being Brought From Africa to America," which claims that black skin marks the taint of a "diabolic dye."

Though the excess of night/dark would not be desirable, the night, nevertheless, plays a crucial part in the recognition of God's plan. It is in "The sable veil, that Night in silence draws,/Conceals effects, but shews th' almighty Cause" (45), the time of dreams, when "As reason's pow'rs by the day our God disclose,/So may we trace him in the night's repose" (47). Wheatley's "epic" poems of signifyin(g) posit themselves as dreams for the culture, "sable veils" that illustrate God's works while they disguise their critiques behind masks of signification. Her dreams/poems of a possible America send a call to the same audience as her day and night when

Shall day to day and night to night conspire To show the goodness of the Almighty Sire? This mental voice shall man regardless hear, And never, never raise the filial pray'r? To-day, O hearken, nor your folly mourn For time mispent, that never will return. (46)

As "Thoughts on the Works of Providence" closes, memory enables Wheatley's human subjects to recognize the power, wisdom, and goodness of God's Providence. When it is asked which one of the "mental powers . . . most the image of th' Eternal shows" (48), Love says to Reason:

"Say, mighty pow'r, how long shall strife prevail, "And with its murmurs load the whisp'ring gale? "Refer the cause to Recollection's shrine, Who loud proclaims my origin divine, "The cause whence heav'n and earth began to be, "And is not man immortaliz'd by me? "Reason let this most causeless strife subside." (48-49)

Reason concurs with Love that "In thee resplendent is the Godhead shown" (49) - judgment realized through Recollection/memory. Presumably, if Wheatley's subjects who ignore God's call, her ". . . man [who]: ungrateful pays/But little homage, and but little praise" (50), re-member their positions vis-a-vis both God and His other works, then they will see the "Infinite Love whete'er . . . [they] turn . . . [their] eyes" which nourishes "all, to serve one general end" (49). "Becoming" and "belonging" American are, by extension, products of this Love, and manifestations of Providence. Participating in these processes, while relating ethically to one's "Others," pays tribute to God and the "purpose" behind His works.

"An Hymn to the Morning" and "An Hymn to the Evening" continue Wheatley's troping on traditional English light/dark imagery, while "On Recollection" and "On Imagination" concern the re-membering of the self through the creative capacities of memory and re-signing/marking one's self. Though both "On Recollection" and "On Imagination" contain numerous classical references and do not mention God per se, the themes of both poems fall within Wheatley's Christianity. This containment is not a matter of co-option or sublation, however. To the contrary, Wheatley develops and articulates her Christianity through artifices that show African and classical influences, becoming modes of signifyin(g) in which fidelity to God's Word takes shape not as canonical stasis but as a protean process of "becoming" and "belonging." "An Hymn to Humanity," meanwhile, pursues the theme of difference and makes the claim for Wheatley's responsibility to refamiliarize her public with God's Word.

Wheatley invokes God on numerous occasions in Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, and while her God does not intervene on her behalf, as do the gods and goddesses in classical epics, supernatural forces are at work in her "epic." Wheatley enumerates the workings and intentions of God in "Thoughts on the Works of Providence," illustrating a picture of God authorizing the growth of Wheatley's America. The Almighty "Himself" speaks in the second and third stanzas of "A Hymn to Humanity" when "He" states,

"My son, my heav'nly fair! "Descend to earth, there place thy throne; "To succour man's afflicted son "Each human heart inspire: "To act in bounties unconfin'd "Enlarge the close contracted mind, "And fill it with thy fire." (95-96)

Meanwhile, in "A Funeral Poem on the Death of C.E. an Infant of Twelve Months" and "On the Death of J.C. an Infant," the voices of "angels" deliver long speeches to the grieving parents. Additionally, Memory becomes a force in the narrative(s), being addressed as Mneme (the muse of Memory) in "On Recollection." The presence of supernatural entities/forces in Wheatley's narrative(s) is the final element of epic poached by the author. The action of Wheatley's "epic" occurs in New England, and in Heaven and the cosmos as well. The epyllion on Niobe, meanwhile, extends the action across centuries and continents, showing another of Wheatley's epic Others in her own struggle for recognition.

Though the cultural position Phillis Wheatley occupied within the dominant narrative was not central or "American," Wheatley's "unauthorized" repetition of the generic marks of "African," "American," and "epic" poetry enabled her to construct narrative(s) of "becoming" and "belonging" American that sound calls for her recognition as both a mature poet and a full subject in American culture. Writing before the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of a Constitution which permitted slavery, Wheatley offers a vision of an American culture without a privileged center and without any qualifications for membership based on race, class, or gender. Rather, Wheatley presents herself as the arche-type of the "American," a type which paradoxically marks itself as "belonging" through a constant process of un/re-marking, of repeating and differing from "itself." Without an examination of how this vision is articulated through her use of repetition and troping in her Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, readers can recognize neither her rhetorical sophistication nor her profound and compelling conception of what characterizes "American-ness."

Notes

1. I am indebted to John C. Shields for the notion that Wheatlay attempted to articulate an intertextual epic in her poetry, a view developed at some length in both his writings and lectures at Illinois State University.

2. See letter to Samson Occum, 11 Feb. 1774 (Collected Works 177).

3. Though the concept of signifyin(g) is crucial to this reading of Wheatlay's poetry, there is not sufficient space in this essay to elaborate Gates's theory fully. However, the following excerpt from Gates's text summarizes Wheatley's encounters with Anglo-American poetic forms and conventions in her work: "What we are privileged to witness here is the (political, semantic) confrontation between two parallel discursive universes: the black American linguistic circle and the white. . . . We bear witness here to a protracted argument over the nature of the sign itself, with the black vernacular discourse proffering its critique of the sign as the difference that blackness makes within the larger political culture and its historical unconscious" (45).

4. Though by the late eighteenth century the words piety and virtue had acquired almost exclusively religious and moral meanings, Wheatley, who had made "some progress" in her Latin studies, according to John Wheatley (Wheatley vi), must have had a knowledge of the original meanings of pietas and virtus, and the very important civic/political aspects of these terms.

5. In The Philosophy of the Limit, Cornell prefaces her chapter "The Ethical Significance of the Chiffonier" with the following quotation from Walter Benjamin, from which she appropriates the figure of the chiffonier. "Here we have a man whose task it is to gather the day's rubbish in the capital. Everything that the big city had cast off, everything it lost, everything it disdained, everything it broke, he collects and collects. . . . He sorts things out and makes intelligent choices; like a miser assembling his treasure, he gathers the trash that, after being regurgitated by the goddess of Industry, will assume the shape of useful or gratifying objects" (64).

Works Cited

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Blessington, Francis C. "'That Undisturbed Song of Pure Content': Paradise Lost and the Epic-Hymn." Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation. Ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986. 468-95.

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Derrida, Jacques. "The Law of Genre." Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. Trans. Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1991. 221-52.

-----. Memoires for Paul DeMan. Ed. Avita Ronell and Eduardo Cadava. Trans. Cecile Lindsay, Jonathan Culler, and Cadava. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

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The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Alex Preminger. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1965.

Shields, John C. The American Aeneas: Classical Origins of the American Self. Unpublished manuscript.

-----. "Phillis Wheatley." African American Writers. Ed. Valerie Smith, Lea Buckler, and A. Walton Litz. New York: Scribner's, 1991. 355-72.

-----. "Phillis Wheatley's Subversion of Classical Stylistics." Unpublished manuscript.

Smith, Cynthia J. "'To Maecenas': Phillis Wheatley's Invocation of an Idealized Reader." Black American Literature Forum 23 (1989): 579-92.

Wheatley, Phillis. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Ed. John C. Shields. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

Robert Kendrick is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Carolina. His major field is eighteenth-century comparative literature.