Although many scholars have discussed Phillis Wheatley’s subversive appropriation of the classics, they have been reluctant to locate a similar strain of subtle repudiation in her Revolutionary War poems. The present article reexamines these verses — ‘To His Excellency General Washington’ (1775), ‘On the Capture of General Lee’ (1776), and ‘On the Death of General Wooster’ (1778) — in light of the tradition of (neo)classical heroic poetry. I read them as a formally innovative epic, dispersed across three apparently ‘patriotic lyrics’ (Levernier (1993: 175)) and dubbed the ‘Little Columbiad’ for their personification of America. Wheatley signals that the triptych should be read as far more than a trio of occasional poems. She not only evokes elements of the epic tradition but also obfuscates the Lucanic heart of her piece within a Virgilian body. This deft juxtaposition of disparate epic registers and forms allows the poet to reprove revolutionary generals, comment upon the war, and decry a movement committed both to liberty and to slavery’s perpetuation. In playing the part of epic admonisher, Wheatley likewise spotlights the genre’s tendency to expose and dissect the flaws of leaders in even its most laudatory iterations. The ‘Little Columbiad’ therefore gives us an important opportunity to reevaluate its author’s pivotal position in the history of North American heroic poetry and epic reception, as well as to nuance regnant paradigms of the genre itself.
Although scholars addressing William Wordsworth's shorter lyrics have traditionally praised his positive treatment of physical otherness, at least one commenter writing on The Prelude correctly characterizes Wordsworth's depiction of disabled individuals as "demonic" (Curran 184). This is a divide that as of yet has not been properly explicated, and one which I attribute to the shift in genre, from lyric to epic, which superimposes onto The Prelude pre-drawn battle-lines between the virile hero and the sluggishly-monstrous, aberrant creatures who stand in his way. Indeed, the poet's consistent stigmatization of disability coupled with an equally persistent insistence that physical ability is fundamental to his epic endeavor situates The Prelude more squarely within the epic tradition than previously noticed. As in the works of poetic forbears, disabled characters nearly derail Wordsworth from his epic project—the development of the poet's mind via the instruction of nature. But more importantly, it is Wordsworth's commentary on how one can most successfully participate in the natural world that definitively excludes physically-othered individuals from achieving even a romanticized iteration of heroic status. By the end of this essay, then, it will become clear that The Prelude, which many scholars consider to be extending Milton's epic turn inward in Paradise Lost, depends far more upon the physical realm, and ability, than previously believed.
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