William Cowper
William Cowper (* November 26, 1731 in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, † April 25, 1800 in East Dereham, Norfolk ) was an English lawyer and poet.
Life
Cowper was the fourth son of Pastor John Cowper and his wife Ann Donne. After first lessons from his father Cowper attended Westminster School and then studied law. After completing his studies, he worked for some time as legal counsel and was admitted at age 23 in 1754 as a lawyer.
Since his childhood suffered the melancholy Cowper severe depression and tried several times to take her own life. For these reasons, a family friend, Pastor Morley Unwin took him to Huntington. As Unwin 1767 a fatal riding accident suffered, Cowper moved to the widow Mary Unwin back to their family. Apparently not harmonize this constellation and so Cowper and Mary Unwin left the following year settled in Olney ( Buckinghamshire ).
There, in collaboration with Pastor John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, 1779 Olney Hymns. Goods still held religious- romantic anthems, the ballad John Gilpin was thoroughly humorous.
1786 Cowper and Mary Unwin settled in Weston Underwood and nine years later they moved to an Eat Dereham, Norfolk. Died there in the summer of 1797 suddenly and unexpectedly Mary Unwin. At the age of 68 years died there on April 25, 1800 and William Cowper.
William Cowper is also known for an extremely wide range of correspondence. He translated the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer and published an edition of works of John Milton.
"The Task "
Cowper's major work, written in the autumn of 1784 and first published in 1785, is influenced by John Gay and James Thomson didactic poem in six books. The essay in blank verse offers changing perspectives: it is naturalistic in precise Deskription, early romantic in the allegory of "nature" and as a cipher divine revelation, realistic in disillusioned Naming the dangers with which the company found itself threatened, anthemic antikisierend, Arcadia Virgil imitating, in Hogarth's satirical manner. All this in a very personal mixture of melancholy and silent, bitter humor. Migrates to the scene of the rural, wintry Buckinghamshire, streaks, raves, mulling, argues the author, the lyrical subject, as the Peripatetics, and philosophizes in a lucid language about the condition of man and his duty over responded conditions, a task that he world, put God and nature.
Works
- John Gilpin. In 1782.
- Olney Hymns. , 1779.
- The Task. In 1785.