'Alexander's Expedition: Genre and Conquest in Thomas Beddoes’s Revolutionary Epic'

This article offers a new interpretation of the neglected epic poem Alexander’s Expedition (1792) by the Bristol scientist and ‘Jacobin’ Thomas Beddoes. The poem’s classical / heroic theme is used as a vehicle for anti-colonial polemic. Beddoes’s influence on the science of the period, as the mentor of Humphry Davy and experimenter with nitrous oxide and other gases, has been extensively re-evaluated; to an extent, he is also known for his impact on the radical politics of the 1790s. This article aims to demonstrate Beddoes’s importance as a literary writer, in terms of both poetic genre and political belief. It also includes a discussion of the nature and status of heroic poetry in the early Romantic period.