The problem of Rousseau's presence within English Romanticism, especially among the major poets, which is to say Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, and Shelley, has been treated by traditional comparative literature as a simply historical question. It has been treated, that is to say, at the level of so-called general ideas, idées reçues, and commonplaces to which the history of ideas sometimes risks sacrificing the complexity of readings. The works that treat the question are few, especially in the English and German realms, where the reading of Rousseau continues to come up against some very deeply entrenched prejudices. The already mentioned works by Roddier and Voisine, both of which are dedicated to the excellent literary historian and friend of Jean Wahl, J. M. Carré, still provide the best inventories of the question and, along with Joseph Texte's book, a catalogue of the idées reçues concerning it.

The question immediately comes up against a considerable difficulty of reading. The main Romantic text where Rousseau appears in his own name presents a daunting challenge to the reader. Rousseau's presence is not inconsiderable but remains allusive and implicit in Wordsworth's Prelude, where it is often the educational theme of Emile that comes into play and where the oft cited analogy between the interiority and retrospective temporality of the autobiographical narratives, The Prelude and The Confessions, is so general that it cannot amount to more than a simple suggestion.