Summary

Romanticism on the Roadchallenges critical orthodoxy by arguing that Wordsworth rejected the political dogmas of his age. Refusing to ally with either radicals or conservatives after the French Revolution, the poet seized on vagrants to attack binary thinking dominating public affairs and to question the value of the Georgian domestic ideal. Drawing on current and historical discussions of homelessness, this study offers a cultural history of vagrancy and explains why Wordsworth chose the homeless to bear his message.