Thursday 17 November Phillis Wheatley

Take the first 10 minutes of class to finish responding to the Hogarth questions. There is no need to answer the last one.
Patrick Henry responses due today.

Friday 18 November vocabulary 5 is due.

In class: not all reasoning is logical. We'll take a look at false syllogisms, which takes two or more simple facts and derives a false third fact from the first two.
The classic example is: Nuns are only women. Only women can have babies. Only Nuns can have babies.

Note: there are many types of seemingly logical arguments that lead to fallacies or "erroneous truths". This is nothing new; the polite term is sophistry. (vocabulary word this week) It was as common in ancient times, as it is today. Next time someone tries to persuade you to do something, listen carefully to their arguments. What techniques are they using on you? And, if you wish to convince someone else, what devices will you use?

Closing persuasive techniques and satire:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU

MOVING ON

Phillis Wheatley
America's First Black Woman Poet

Born in Senegal, Africa in 1753, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven to John and Susannah Wheatley of Boston. Although originally brought into the Wheatley household as a servant and attendant to Wheatley's wife, Phillis was soon accepted as a member of the family, and was raised with the Wheatley's other two children.


Phillis soon displayed her remarkable talents by learning to read and write English. At the age of twelve she was reading the Greek and Latin classics, and passages from the Bible. At thirteen she wrote her first poem.


Phillis became a Boston sensation after she wrote a poem on the death of the evangelical preacher George Whitefield in 1770. Three years later thirty-nine of her poems were published in London as "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral." It was the first book to be published by a black American.


Most of Phillis Wheatley's poems reflect her religious and classical New England upbringing. Writing in heroic couplets, many of her poems consist of elegies while others stress the theme of Christian salvation.


An Hymn To The Evening

SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main


The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;


Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,


Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.


Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,


And through the air their mingled music floats.


Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies arespread!


But the west glories in the deepest red:


So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,


The living temples of our God below!


Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,


And draws the sable curtains of the night,


Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,


At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;


So shall the labours of the day begin


More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.


Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes.



On Being Brought from Africa to America
'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, Negro's, black as Cain,


May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train