William Cowper (poet)

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William Cowper

William Cowper, (/ ˈkuːpər /), born November 26, 1731 in Berkhamstead , Hertfordshire ; † April 25, 1800 in East Dereham , Norfolk , was an English poet .

Life

Cowper was the fourth son of Pastor John Cowper and his wife Ann Donne. After taking lessons from his father, Cowper attended Westminster School and then studied law. After completing his studies, he worked as a lawyer for some time and was admitted to the bar in 1754 at the age of 23.

Since childhood, the melancholy cowper suffered from severe depression and tried several times to take his own life. For these reasons, a family friend, Pastor Morley Unwin, took him to Huntington. When Unwin suffered a fatal riding accident in 1767, Cowper and the widow Mary Unwin moved back to their family. Apparently, this constellation is not in harmony, and so Cowper and Mary Unwin left in the following year Olney ( Buckinghamshire down).

There, in collaboration with Pastor John Newton , the author of Amazing Grace , the Olney Hymns were written in 1779 . While the hymns were still religious and romantic, the ballad John Gilpin was humorous through and through.

In 1786 Cowper and Mary Unwin settled in Weston Underwood and nine years later they moved to Eat Dereham, Norfolk. There, in the summer of 1797, Mary Unwin died suddenly and unexpectedly. William Cowper died there on April 25, 1800 at the age of 68.

William Cowper is also known for an extremely varied correspondence. He translated the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer and published a complete works of John Milton .

The Task

Cowper's major work, written in the fall of 1784 and first published in 1785, is a didactic poem in six books influenced by John Gay and James Thomson . The essay in blank verse impresses with its changing perspectives: it is naturalistic in its precise description, early romantic in the allegorization of "nature" as a cipher of divine revelation, realistic in the disillusioned naming of the dangers from which society saw itself threatened, hymnically antiquated, Arcadia and Imitating Virgil , satirical in Hogarth's manner. All of this in a very personal mixture of melancholy and quiet, bitter humor. In the setting of rural, wintry Buckinghamshire, the author, the lyrical subject, wanders, wanders, raves, ponders, argues as a peripatetic , and philosophizes in lucid language about the state of mankind and the circumstances entrusted to his duty, a task that he has World, God and nature.

“Speak, O you shining hosts, who sail a sea that knows no storms, under vaults, untrusted by clouds, whether you from your height, from which you can clearly see systems invisible to man, systems, of whose origin not yet news Here you reach our lower world, do you see a people who, like ours, favor those born in the womb and burial, and yet determined to rise and have a more brilliant sky than you? Like someone who, after a long stay on distant coasts, longs to return home and, when he sees his country's pale, wind-rammed cliffs rising from green waves from afar, shoots his gaze radiant with happiness towards the beloved land, so I look with vain hope and many a sigh Wish you radiant fire, which you are called like a flashing light in the blue abyss, to guide the body-enclosed spirit home out of life's labor in never-ending rest. "

See also

literature

Work editions

  • Robert Southey (Ed.): The Works of William Cowper: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence and Translations, with a Life of the Author by the Editor . 15 volumes. Baldwin and Cradock, London 1836–1837 ( full text of all volumes in the HathiTrust Library). New edition in 8 volumes: HG Boehn, London 1854.
  • James King, Charles Ryskamp (Ed.): The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper . 5 volumes. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979-1986.
  • JD Baird, Charles Ryskamp (Eds.): The Poems of William Cowper . 3 volumes. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980-1995.
  • James Sambrook (Ed.): The Task and Selected Other Poems . Longman, Harlow 1994.

Translations into German

  • William Cowper's Selected Seals . Translated into German by Wilhelm Borel. Justus Naumann's Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1870. ( full text in the Google book search)

Secondary literature

  • Conrad Brunström: William Cowper: Religion, Satire, Society . Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg PA 2004.
  • David Cecil : The Stricken Deer: The Life of William Cowper . Constable & Co., London 1929.
    • German edition: The great fear or The life of William Cowper . Translated by Franz Wernecke. Beeck, Hanover 1947.
  • Bill Hutchings: The Poetry of William Cowper . Croon Helms, London 1983.
  • James King: William Cowper: A Biography . Duke University Press, Durham NC 1986.
  • John Piper: The Hidden Smile of God . Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois 2001.
    • German edition: Steadfast in suffering: John Bunyan, William Cowper, David Brainerd. Translated by Ulrike Wilhelm. Christian literature distribution, Bielefeld 2006. ( Full text (PDF) on the publisher's website; PDF, 966 kB)
  • Vincent Newey: Cowper's Poetry: A Critical Study and Reassessment . Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 1982.
  • Martin Priestman: Cowper's 'Task': Structure and Influence . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1983.
  • Charles Ryskamp: William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq .: A Study of His Life and Works to the Year 1768 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1959.
  • Cowper, William . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 7 : Constantine Pavlovich - Demidov . London 1910, p. 349 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Fiction

  • Bryan Lynch: The Winner of Sorrow: A Novel. New Island, Dublin 2005, ISBN 1-905494-25-4 (novel about Cowper's life).

Web links

Commons : William Cowper  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Remarks

  1. from Book 5