POETRY AT MIAMI

“Referring to Miss Wrights Lecture on Knowledge”

REFERRING TO MISS WRIGHT'S LECTURE ON KNOWLEDGE When Eve the tempting fruit had tasted, That opened knowledge to her view, With prompt benevolence she hasted To bid her partner share it too. Thus woman from the world's creation, First found the spot where knowledge grew; And woman, (sages of our nation,) Now holds the tempting fruit to you. Had Adam pause before he tasted, To think who tempted first his bride, The fruit of knowledge might have wasted Upon the tree so long denied. The world in darkness long has slept, In spite of Eve, or school, or college; The sages of the Earth have crept To rest without the light of knowledge. But a new ADVENT greets us here; No more the 'OLD WORD' shall deride us; For in our western Hemisphere, A comet comes to light and guide us. Port Folio.
Port Folio, 1829

“Referring to Miss Wright’s Lecture on Knowledge”

“Port Folio”

The Literary Register (March 7, 1829, Oxford Ohio), 96.

This pseudonymous poem by “Port Folio,” praises Frances Wright, who in 1828 had repeatedly delivered a sensationally controversial lecture, “On the Nature of Knowledge,” in Cincinnati. An abolitionist, a socialist, a free-thinker, a champion of women’s rights, and a staunch opponent of religious faith, Wright had traveled to Cincinnati in 1828 to “to take up the cause of insulted reason and outraged humanity” by presenting a series of lectures on knowledge and human reason.

The author of this poem praises Wright as a “comet” that “comes to guide us,” but also introduces a note of ambivalence–or plausible deniability–by describing Wright as a new Eve, who “now holds the tempting fruit to you.” Such references to Eve (according to Christian tradition, Eve was the first woman, who ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge) were used by both supporters and opponents of women’s rights.

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