My MA dissertation focused on the relationship between Wordsworth’s presentation of homelessness and the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Exploring the themes of displacement and exile in Byron’s work is a natural progression from this research. I aim to establish a historical background for the study of Byron’s engagement with, and transformation of, poverty in his letters and poems. This will include tracing Byron’s responses to literary representations of poverty and gauging how these influenced his own writings about poor people. This background study will be used to develop a new reading of the Byronic hero as a culturally displaced figure.

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