ABSTRACT
In the previous three chapters we have seen the ways in which the Greeks celebrated Prometheus as fire thief, political rebel, and symbol of human progress and potential. Hesiod’s Prometheus is a trickster figure responsible for the bleak nature of the human experience in archaic Greece while in the fifth-century BC, Prometheus’ myth offers Athenian poets and philosophers a productive framework for thinking more positively about revolution (both political and intellectual) and mankind’s progress towards a more civilized and prosperous existence. Turning now to the Romantic period, it is Prometheus’ dual role as defiant rebel and creator of humans that captures the imagination of European poets and writers. While Prometheus did not completely fall out of favour in the intervening years – in the early Christian tradition Prometheus was fused with Christ as twin symbols of human suffering, and he was certainly an important source for Milton’s figure of Satan in Paradise Lost – the combined force of his political potential and his creative spirit made Prometheus particularly well-suited to those poets and writers who, having experienced the promises and the disappointments of the French Revolution, were looking for new models of heroism on the political and artistic stage.
