Dr Thomas Beddoes and the Politics of the Imagination

Abstract

Coleridge's account of the imagination in Biographia Literaria as a phenomenon that functions to 'idealize and to unify' is still highly influential. But Coleridge's contemporaries explored alternative accounts of the phenomenon. For Thomas Beddoes the imagination was a vital stimulus of scientific enquiry and political activism. Beddoes's work demonstrates the extent to which the Romantic literary imagination was informed by investigations in other fields. This essay analyses Beddoes's exploration of the imagination in his scientific, political and medical practice. Beddoes's writings emphasise the importance of imaginative enquiry across all his works, and challenge the regulative effects of disciplinary distinctions.