Final answer:
Phillis Wheatley catered to a predominantly white readership in colonial America. Some critics argue that her work subtly critiqued slavery, while others believe she failed to convey resistance to the institution of slavery in her poetry.
Step-by-step explanation:
The audience that Phillis Wheatley catered to was primarily a white readership. This was a necessity for her, an African-born poet living in slavery, to find voice and validation within the confines of colonial American society. Her works, such as Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, were published in 1773 and achieved great renown both in America and Europe. Despite the limitations imposed upon her due to her status as a slave, Wheatley attained full literacy and authorship, though her authorship was often doubted because of her race.
Her literary contributions were a matter of some controversy, as some scholars like J. Saunders Redding viewed her failure to directly address slavery in her poems negatively. Others, however, like James Levernier and Charles Scruggs identified a subtle critique of slavery in her work.
One perspective is that Wheatley seemed to write in a neoclassic verse that conformed to Euro-American traditions, which resulted in criticism from scholars like Redding and Angelene Jamison for not openly resisting slavery. Nevertheless, other scholars argue that her use of diacritical marks, biblical myth, and symbol in her poetry provided an avenue for her to express her African heritage and critique the institution of slavery in a subtle manner.
Wheatley's use of elegies gave her a chance to reflect on her African homeland and to express a veiled resistance to slavery through her work. Additionally, Wheatley privileged a coterie of readers with manuscript copies of her popular poems, further underscoring her literary influence and the broad audience that her works reached.