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A provocative account of Wordsworth's representation of walking as the exercise of imagination, Romantic Vagrancy traces a recurrent analogy between the poet in search of material and the literally dispossessed vagrants and beggars he encounters. Reading Wordsworth - and Rousseau before him - from the perspective of recent debates about the political and social rights of the homeless, Celeste Langan argues that both literature and vagrancy are surprisingly rich and disturbing images of the 'negative freedom' at the heart of liberalism. Langan shows how the formal structure of the Romantic poem - the improvisational excursion - mirrors its apparent themes, often narratives of impoverishment or abandonment. According to Langan, the encounter between the beggar and the passer-by in Wordsworth's poetry does not simply reveal a social conscience or its lack; it represents the advent of the liberal subject, whose identity is stretched out between origin and destination, caught between economic and political forces and the workings of desire.

Dichters in de literatuur --- Homelessness in literature --- Landloperij in de literatuur --- Poets in literature --- Poètes dans la littérature --- Situation des personnes sans abri dans la littérature --- Thuisloosheid in de literatuur --- Vagabondage dans la littérature --- Vagrancy in literature --- Literature and society --- England --- History --- 19th century --- Romanticism --- Wordsworth, William, - 1770-1850 - Political and social views. --- Liberalism in literature. --- Walking in literature. --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Homelessness in literature. --- Poets in literature. --- Wordsworth, William, --- Political and social views. --- Wœ̄tsawœ̄t, Winlīam, --- Wurdzwurth, Wilyam, --- Varḍsavartha Viliyama, --- Axiologus, --- WORDSWORTH (WILLIAM), 1770-1850 --- ROMANTICISM --- GREAT BRITAIN --- LITERATURE AND SOCIETY --- HOMELESSNESS IN LITERATURE --- LIBERALISM IN LITERATURE --- VAGRANCY IN LITERATURE --- WALKING IN LITERATURE