ABSTRACT
This chapter is an invitation to read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's neglected essay 'On the Prometheus of Aeschylus'. Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to mankind and suffered the wrath of the upstart tyrant, Zeus, for bestowing this supernatural gift on a wretched race, was an attractive figure for many Romantic writers. This chapter examines the extreme extent to which Coleridge thought his way into a version of the Promethean role. For according to Coleridge's fundamental intuition, Prometheus Bound is a 'philosop heme', or a work of mythology that bodies forth a philosophical idea. Coleridge also applies another favourite term to describe Prometheus Bound, when he calls it 'a philosopheme and a tautegorikon'. As Coleridge complains at the beginning of 'On the Prometheus', certain French authors had claimed that monotheistic religion gradually emerged from the relatively unsophisticated polytheism of Egypt. 'On the Prometheus of Aeschylus' is an example of Coleridgean practical criticism' in the original sense of that term.
