William Cowper's Major Work - Primordial Racial Symbols

William Cowper (1631-1700) is far more a Classical Poet than a Romantic. He is a blend of the old and the new, with much of the forms of the old and something of the spirit of the new. His career is molded by the social and literary traditions of the 18th century. He is fore-runner of the Romantic Revival of the 19th century. Although Augustan in many features, Cowper's poetry with its theme of escape and celebration of Nature, is part of the complex movement of sensibility which culminated in the Romanticism of William Wordsworth. So, he may be placed among the immediate predecessors of the Lake Poets.

Cowper's major work; The Task was undertaken at the bidding of the lively and charming Lady Austen who directed him to write about the Sofa in her verandah. The Task began with a mock heroic account of the development of the sofa form a simple stool but soon it passed into a symbol of status, as well as a particular way of living.

Cowper adopted fantasy - making through archetypal symbolism in his poetry. His symbols do enliven his gentle wit and the religious side of his nature. In the use of images or symbols in the poems of poets like Cowper, is to use the words of Carl Gustav Jung "There is manifested and inadequate psychic adaptation." Jung is the potent influence in the field of Archetypal criticism. He has elaborated several important Archetypal images maturing as images in poetry. This book is the first venture in making explicit the Archetypal symbols used in a long meditative poem The Task, the magnum opus of William Cowper.

**Contents and Sample Pages**