SOURCE: Elfenbein, Andrew. “Cowper's Task and the Anxieties of Femininity.” Eighteenth-Century Life 13, no. 3 (November 1989): 1-17.

In the following essay, Elfenbein follows Cowper's “revalorization of the feminine” in The Task, a process of poetically elevating femininity from a subordinate position relative to masculinity.

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...