SOURCE: “Cowper's Task and the Anxieties of Femininity,” in Eighteenth-Century Life, Vol. 13, No. 3, Nov. 1989, pp. 1-17.

In the following essay, Elfenbein analyzes Cowper's treatment of femininity in The Task.

The poetry of William Cowper, especially his most famous poem, The Task, both encapsulates the developments of eighteenth-century poetry from Popean satire to the doctrine of sensibility and anticipates the achievements of the early romantics. The Task, more than any other poem of the later eighteenth century, functions as a turning point in literary history because of its radical redefinition of possibilities for the poetic subject. Critics, however, have rarely paid close attention to Cowper's powerful manipulation of ideology, and locating precisely his innovations can help us comprehend the peculiar complexities of the position of the poet in relation to society during this era.

I will argue that Cowper's particular power reveals itself most strikingly in his treatment of...