ABSTRACT

Perhaps it is Fanny Price’s reading of William Cowper in Mansfield Park that is partly responsible for affixing the image of him as the traditionalist spokesperson for the preservation of the natural landscape and the comfort of the home in the minds of so many readers. While his rural sympathies and quiet domesticity have made it easy to overlook his commitment to a world beyond Olney, Cowper clearly possessed a keen awareness of certain global issues, the abolition of the slave trade in particular among them. As his recent readers W. B. Hutchings and Karen O’Brien have shown,1 there is ample evidence to indicate Cowper thought deeply about topical subjects of a political nature-about the French Revolution, about the East India Company, and about West Indian slavery. As a political thinker, he appears generally to advance positions less progressive than the vanguard agendas of his radical contemporaries, with the notable exception of his writings on slavery and the slave trade. What I find most distinctive about these works is their examination of the nature of literary writing as both a species of and a conduit for political action. Cowper’s view of political engagement itself as a problematic motive of art emerges as an inescapable concern of these works.