English Language and Literature ETDs

Lois Viscoli

Publication Date

2-6-1974

Abstract

The Promethean archetype reaches its fullest development in Blake and Shelley. In order to determine a common outline as well as variations of content within the myth, descriptions, aspects, and symbols associated with Prometheus in the accounts of Hesiod, Aeschylus, Apollodorus, Apollonius, Lucian, and Pausanias reveal that the archetype is a pattern which persists amid variations.

The core of the archetype – that man must pay a price for fire – suggests that, although greater awareness is available, man must suffer for it. On a cosmic-mythical level, the works of Hesiod and Aeschylus parallel works of philosophy, poetry, and religion by eighteenth-and nineteenth-century writers. While Hesiod justifies the suffering around him by finding a higher justice above in the omnipotence of Zeus, he blames the theft of Prometheus for man's deterioration from the Golden Age. On the other hand, Aeschylus, in stressing Prometheus as a culture-bringer, lessens the importance of Zeus at the same time that he emphasizes Prometheus's endurance and suffering. As man progresses from a primitive state, he acquires greater consciousness as well as more responsibility.

On a cosmic-historical level, the principles of chronological and cultural primitivism, reflecting Hesiod's and Aeschylus's thought, parallel the deistic eighteenth century and the progressive view of Kant's man who, as a finite being only approximates infinity through striving. A comparison of Hesiod and Pope shows that a cyclic view, which relies on a previous Golden Age, results in an orderly, Zeus-oriented world where men and gods are unequal, and where human law imitates divine law. The suffering of Prometheus is absorbed by the necessary strife of a cosmos built on opposition.

The eighteenth-century view of man as part of a cosmic scheme changes to the nineteenth-century view that man is responsible for creating his own world. A new way of interpreting myth is encouraged by the principle of plenitude, which emphasizes variety rather than harmony, and by the syncretic mythographers, who examine the common origin of myth. Suffering now guides man to self-awareness. Aesthetically, a mimetic gives way to an expressive theory. The changes in dialectical and structural aesthetics lead, by the time of the nineteenth century, to a creative, active Prometheus, rather than one who passively inhabits a structured cosmos.

The two lines of development stemming from Aeschylus reveal that there is both a "Prometheus Bound" and a "Prometheus Triumphant." The first is born of the Romantic revolt and is illustrated by Byron, whose emphasis is on a defiant Prometheus; the second by Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, where Promethean activity, characterized by the effort to overcome opposition, leads to a visionary state. As a consequence, the familiar becomes divine and man triumphs, not over Zeus, but over himself.

Blake's Prometheus is triumphant because he is visionary. While Blake's Orc is a “Prometheus Bound,” his Los is a "Prometheus Triumphant." who uses contraries to progress to a higher unity. Unlike Shelley's Prometheus, who strives to overcome suffering, Blake finds that through suffering man realizes his brotherhood and the necessity to forgive the sins of others. Man's inequality with the gods becomes irrelevant when man's divinity is extolled, and Zeus is seen as a projection of man's thinking. In showing how this new vision of man is earned through greater awareness and suffering, Blake and Shelley dramatically illuminate the core of the archetype.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Morris Emery Eaves

Second Committee Member

Hoyt Trowbridge

Third Committee Member

David Marcus Johnson

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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