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Reviewed by:
  • New Essays on Phillis Wheatley ed. by John C. Shields and Eric D. Lamore
  • Will Harris
John C. Shields and Eric D. Lamore, eds. New Essays on Phillis Wheatley. Knoxville: U of Tennessee Press, 2011. 406 pp. $60.00.

One could argue convincingly that William H. Robinson and John C. Shields have done more than any other critics to shape Wheatley criticism over the past forty years. I distinctly recall having the impression in the mid-nineties that Shields was almost singlehandedly mapping and pushing scholarship on this author into a new era, expanding on Robinson's earlier work, and presenting new evidence and questions for Wheatley and colonial American scholars. In the last four years, Shields has published two Wheatley books (2008 and 2010), and co-edited as well as contributed to the currently reviewed collection, New Essays on Phillis Wheatley.

In short, I had high expectations of this collection, and it does not disappoint— my review copy is well marked and annotated now, and has become a primary reference for future scholarship. The book also surprises, in more ways than one. While it includes scholars familiar to me like Phillip M. Richards, Mary McAleer Balkun, and Shields himself, I was unfamiliar with the writings of most of the scholars. (I comment as a critic writing from outside the U. S., and halfway around the globe.) In fact, nine of the fourteen scholars included in this volume are assistant professors or independent scholars—a daring move on Shields's part that, I believe, succeeds. Obviously, Shields wanted to cultivate the next generation of Wheatley scholars with this text, as well as capture current directions of study in the field. This desire extends to Shields's willingness to share editorship with one of these emerging scholars, Eric D. Lamore.

Against this backdrop, I found two qualities to be particularly interesting. One was the editors' willingness to include essays and comments that differed from Shields's own critical stances. The book is an open forum, with scholars both acknowledging and departing from Shields's "canonical" (here meaning established and conceptually delineating) views. Although both editors' critical leanings are classical, more than half of the essays in the book diverge into "newly applied historical contexts" including reception theory, queer theory, marketing studies, New Historicism, and Pan-Africanism. Another noticeable quality—almost an omission—lies in Shields restraint in defining the past, present and conceivable future of Wheatley studies. After giving brief introductions to each essay in the book, Shields spends the second half of the Introduction defining current and future trends in classical studies in American culture. I agree with Shields's underlying assumption that an understanding of classicism immeasurably enriches our appreciation of Wheatley and other Early American writers, often producing revelatory insights. But perhaps Shields misses an opportunity here, as well. If, as I suspect, Shields intended for this book to become a seminal text in a possible Wheatley resurgence, then his expert summation of the current state and possible directions of Wheatley scholarship would have been invaluable.

Perhaps this latter view sets an unrealistic expectation, however. A quick glance at the Works Cited pages of the included essays suggests that the gathering process for this book ended in early to mid-2008. One could argue that in that same year, a Wheatley resurgence already was beginning. PMLA published Katy L. Chiles's and Vincent Carretta's Wheatley essays in 2008 and 2010. Joanna Brooks published a Wheatley essay in American Literature in 2010. MELUS published Will Harris's essay in 2008. Research in African Literatures published Adélékè Adéèkó's essay in 2009. Jennifer Thorn has published two Wheatley essays, in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture and Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (2008 and 2010). In addition, [End Page 250] two books published Wheatley chapters that came to my attention at the far side of the world (one in William Cook's and James Tatum's African American Writers and Classical Tradition, 2010; and one in April C. E. Langley's The Black Aesthetic Unbound, 2008). Of course, I have already mentioned Shields's two Wheatley books. New Essays on Phillis Wheatley correctly anticipated the...

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