In What Ways, if any, Can Shelleys Prometheus Unbound Be Considered a Revolutionary Work - Book Report/Review Example

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) In What Ways, If Any, Can Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound be Considered a Revolutionary Work. The myth of Prometheus, the benefactor of the human race and creator of science and craft, has not lost its visual power despite of the fact that the story was recorded more than 2700 years ago. What is the reason that we are still captivated by a story that defies our logic and does not reflect our present cultural or religious beliefs? Modern scholars associate the story of Prometheus with a revolutionary change of the Neolithic revolution i.e. transition from a society of gatherers and hunters to a society of farmers. The Prometheus myth reflects the collective human experience in major transitions. This is why it speaks to us even today. P. B. Shelley was an English Romantic poet who rebelled against English politics and conservative values. He drew no distinction between politics and poetry and his work reflected the radical ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era. Like many poets of his times, Shelley employed mythological themes and figures from Greek poetry. Poets and scholars have traditionally read the tale of Prometheus as a lesson in revolution, seeing the imprisoned Titan as an emblem of the lone individual in heroic rebellion against mindless tyranny. The title character, Prometheus is perhaps more than other heroes and serves the scholars as a sort of critical mirror. As many critics have noted, through the doubling of the human qualities of Prometheus and Jupiter, Shelley subtly emphasizes the lack of distance between the tyrant and the slave, and also the cynical nature of time through periods of liberty and tyranny. Shelley’s manipulation of genres throughout Prometheus Unbound creates a controlled sense of expectation and contrast that permits him to progressively expand his drama towards universal harmony. The lyrical harmonization of the universe pervades all levels of drama, uniting the mental drama of Prometheus and with the external drama of a transformed world, signaling the affirmative revolutionary edict of a new age of humanity. In Prometheus Unbound Shelley uses the old myth of the Titan who rebelled against the tyranny of the gods and who was punished by being chained to the rock. Obviously there is no amount of reality or human interest in the fantasy. There are two plays named Prometheus unbound. Both are concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus and his suffering at the hand of Zeus. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is a four act play first published in 1820. It is an inspiration from the first ‘Prometheus Bound’ by Aeschylus and concerns Prometheus’ release from captivity. Shelley’s narration gives no account of any reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus (Jupiter) which is how it is in Aeschylus’ version. Shelley’s Zeus is overthrown and Prometheus is released. Though it is very much a poem of Shelley’s own revolutionary age, Prometheus Unbound transcends the limiting context of any particular time. Shelley’s play was not to be a stage drama, it was a closet drama. Shelley wrote for the imagination, intending his play’s stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers. It was what was later called Romantic Poetry. Shelley’s own introduction to the play explains his intentions behind the work. He defends his choice to adapt Aeschylus’ myth – his choice to have Jupiter overthrown rather than Prometheus reconciled. Prometheus Bound is different from most tragedies in which generally the hero dies and falls, because Prometheus triumphs and survives and during the process both Prometheus and Zeus learns and grows. Shelley’s own introduction of the play explains his intentions behind the work. He defends his choice to adapt Aeschylus’ myth- his choice to have Jupiter overthrown rather than Prometheus recoiled with: “In truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of recoiling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary.” The great period drama, Prometheus Unbound is unanimously acclaimed as Shelley’s masterpiece. It unravels those qualities of Shelley’s mind which gives us a more powerful sense of the political point and force of Shelley’s extraordinarily created images that both fascinate and elude a complete grasp. His was a mind that moved freely in the realm of abstract ideas which still carry us away as profoundly human and real. The relevance of Shelley’s revolutionary idealism deserves more respect and critical attention than any of the Great Romantics. Shelley’s romantic version retains a certain appeal in its representation of heroic individualism and its vision of redemptive love leading to an earthly utopia. Arguably, the play suggests that freedom and authority must be balanced in any ethical person, leader and society. This contradicts the thoughts of those who think Prometheus myth is solely a struggle between two absolutes, tyranny and freedom. It is to make the audience understand the balance required by an ethical individual ruler and society. Shelley had always had a revolutionary outlook towards things around him. He was kicked out of Oxford for publishing an atheist tract. In his Prometheus, Shelley seeks to create a perfect revolutionary in an ideal, abstract sense. Shelley’s Prometheus is also an improvement upon the Jesus of the Bible, Christian orthodox tradition and Milton’s character of the Son in Lost Paradise. Jesus sacrificed himself to save mankind but did nothing to overthrow the type of tyranny. Prometheus resembled Jesus in the fashion that they both believed in the power of inflexible truth and in how Prometheus overcomes his tyrannical ruler, Jupiter. Prometheus triumphs over Jupiter by ‘recalling’ a curse Prometheus had made against Jupiter in an epoch before the play begins. The expression “recall” in this sense means both to remember and to pull back. Prometheus, by being magnanimous to Jupiter confiscates Jupiter’s supremacy which all along seems to have stemmed from his rival’s anger and will to violence. Prometheus commits a lesser wrong, that of disobeying the tyrant and prevents the greater wrong of the destruction of the helpless human race. As viewed from the human perspective, Prometheus efforts seem heroic but from the Olympian point of view, they speak betrayal. Through out Jupiter’s dialogue Shelley has made use of the volcanic imagery and with Demogorgon, a figure of necessity, a revolutionary change. Reading this play as a psychodrama, we can see that Shelley’s presentation of Zeus’ descent is ironic, further revealing Prometheus and Jupiter as essentially opposite versions of the same character. Their personalities share much in common; pride, temper, stubbornness and vengefulness. However Prometheus also had dark qualities in his character. He was selfish, ego centered and deceptive. Prometheus is P. B. Shelley’s answer to the mistakes of the French Revolution and its cycle of replacing one tyrant with another. Shelley wished to know how a revolution could be conceived which would avoid doing that, and in the end of this play, there is no power in the charge at all; it is an anarchist’s paradise. After the French Revolution, the rebel Prometheus became synonymous with Napoleon. Shelley’s revolutionary views are expressed first in his introduction of the play. He finishes his preface to the play with an evocation of his intentions as a poet in these words: “My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that, until the mind can love, and admire, and love and trust and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of this happiness.” In Prometheus Unbound written by Shelley expresses his enthusiasm for revolutionary change through the plot device and resulting thematic element of generational upheaval taking place through the poem’s specific action of Jupiter’s own progeny being the force which brings about his downfall. Prometheus Unbound is a fiercely revolutionary text championing free will, goodness, hope and idealism in the face of oppression. The spirit of all those who forced to live in shackles under the shadow of tyranny is a palpable thing which cannot be denied regardless of the form the tyranny takes and Shelley may be making reference to that here. Demogorgon is symbolic of this move towards revolution and he encapsulates as Jupiter’s son the allegorical extension of children rising up to revolt against their fathers and write a new history. The Epilogue spoken by Demogorgon, expresses his tenets as a poet and as a revolutionary: “To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.” In this play the revolution is successful and Shelley once again showing his idealistic side, in this case it means that the French revolution does not necessarily mean the failure of revolution in general. Prometheus suffers because he refused to give in to the higher power. Shelley is relying on the understanding that revolution and change is a generational occasion caused by children’s general inclination to rebel against the oppressive rule of their parents. Demogorgon rebels against his father Jupiter to allegorize this constant state of affairs, revealing his own enthusiasm for revolution and change. In the wake of the Promethean Revolution, Demogorgon reaffirms that ‘Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom and Endurance’ are the key to reform. Shelley has been so wondrously gifted and versatile that his play holds the promise of a new industrial revolution. The changes of the Neolithic revolution were fundamental and radical. They can be compared only to the industrial revolution of the 18th century and probably the post industrial revolution that we face today. It is noteworthy that during the industrial revolution many artists and authors chose the myth of Prometheus to illustrate their experience with the new era (Wutrich 1995, pp. 67) While critics and reviewers of the past two hundred years have struggled to find an apposite analogy for Prometheus Unbound in literature, it seems possible that Shelley had non-literary models in mind when he was writing this play. In the longer poems of Shelley, there are two prominent elements. The first constituent is revolt. The poet was aggressively opposed to the existing arrangement of society, and did not loose any prospect to articulate his abhorrence for the existing law and order which he called Tyranny. To satisfy his spirit of revolution, were numerous anarchistic theories, called the new philosophy, which had a curious quality that they hotly denied the old faith, law, morality as other man formulated such matters, and fervently believed any quack who appeared with a new nostrum warranted to cure all social disorders. The second obvious element in Shelley’s poetry is his love of beauty. It is not the common beauty of the nature or humanity which the common man celebrates but a strange supernatural beauty with no earthly quality or reality. Works Cited: * Paper by Patomer Ristic on ‘Shelley’s First Major Lyrics and Prometheus Unbound’, 2000. http://facta.junis.ni.ac.yu/lal/lal2000/lal2000-02.pdf * Cian Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, 2005. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=hXGKvhXP_WkC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=prometheus+unbound+revolutionary&source=web&ots=6o09prx-yR&sig=8lY_9nBan8S2XHOSxNXhRvlGXdM&hl=en * Samuel Lyndon Gladden, Shelley’s textual seductions. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=N9Hoa1eR7TIC&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=prometheus+unbound+revolutionary&source=web&ots=QwlKfV3Y1X&sig=87WaLl1rowAFO53lK8Wn_IUf5Qs&hl=en * Working Paper: Prometheus Unbound by Andreas Klinke and Ortwin Ren http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/opus/volltexte/2004/1712/pdf/ab153.pdf * Memoirs of Shelley, 1908. http://www.openlibrary.org/details/memoirofpercybys00rossrich * http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/opera/quillin/quillin.html Read More