Columbia
Columbia was a female figure who was common representation in art of the United States in the 19th century. The term derived of course from Christopher Columbus. It was introduced by black poet Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) in her 1776 poem, "To His Excellency George Washington".[1] Washington was impressed and asked to meet Wheatley. the term caught public fancy and many places were named after her, such as the District of Columbia, Columbia University, and the Colombia River.[2] Before Columbia came into wide use around 1790, America was often represented as an Indian princess, especially in European cartoons.
Wheatley's poem was based heavily on classical Roman sources, which she used in translation, and as befits a model of Republicanism, Columbia is garbed in Roman dress.[3]
Columbia usually was disdainful of aristocracy and royalty, but was of mixed feelings about imperialism.
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As an iconic image of America, Columbia was commonly used in World War I, but she was displaced by the Statue of Liberty in the 1920s, and is today seldom seen. A Hollywood studio took the name "Columbia Pictures" in 1924 and still features Columbia's image at the start of its films; the studio is now owned by SONY of Japan.
The name without the image remains more common, as in the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) or in the space shuttle Columbia, which exploded on February 1, 2003.
Further reading
- Sheppard, Alice. Cartooning for Suffrage (1994) online at Questia, discusses numerous cartoons featuring Columbia
references
- ↑ Previous poems by others had used the term in the 1760s, but they were forgotten.
- ↑ British Columbia, part of Canada, is named after the river.
- ↑ Thomas J. Steele, "The Figure of Columbia: Phillis Wheatley plus George Washington," New England Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 264-266 in JSTOR