Romanticism on the Road challenges 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 seizes on vagrants to attack the binary thinking dominating public
affairs and to question the value of the Georgian domestic ideal.
Drawing on current and historical discussions of homelessness, the study
offers a cultural history of vagrancy and explains why Wordsworth chose
the homeless to bear his message.