William Cowper | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 40 pages of analysis & critique of William Cowper.

William Cowper | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 40 pages of analysis & critique of William Cowper.
This section contains 11,194 words
(approx. 38 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Richard Feingold

SOURCE: Feingold, Richard. “William Cowper: State, Society, and Countryside.” In Nature and Society: Later Eighteenth-Century Uses of the Pastoral and Georgic, pp. 121-53. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1978.

In the following excerpt, Feingold evaluates The Task as a public poem, examining the work's principal themes and the dynamics of its social critique.

The idiosyncrasies of William Cowper's poetic career create an obvious difficulty for a study dealing with his work in a context wider than that provided by the man's life and work themselves. Cowper's life was tormented by a set of symptoms, habits, and fears which his poetry in many places reflects. It seems perfectly reasonable to maintain that whatever can be explained about Cowper's poetry will need to be carefully qualified by referring to his peculiar biography, particularly when we consider that Cowper turned to poetry for reasons intimately connected with the torment his life at...

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This section contains 11,194 words
(approx. 38 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Richard Feingold
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Critical Essay by Richard Feingold from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.