Scholarship on Wordsworth has long been concerned with the relationship between his poetry and his politics. Poetics and Politics contributes significantly to the ongoing discussion by breaking through the either-or assumption that underwrites most theses. Dr. Liu focuses on the poetry of Wordsworth in the late 1790s and the early 1800s, exploring both his critique of a heroic model of political interventionism and his promotion of an egalitarian model of poet-reader cooperation. In the context of Wordsworth's crisis of belief, this study shows how his poetic innovations constituted his daring and brilliant revaluation of his political commitment.