T. Benis - Böcker

Romantic Diasporasexamines exile in the Romantic period fromthe different perspectives of French émigrés in England, British convicts transported to Australia, and Jews in their perennial diaspora.

Toby Benis 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.