ABSTRACT
Shelley thus also creates an image for an author very different from that of prevalent contemporary view of the Promethean artist, which she will draw on inside her text subtitled ‘The Modern Prometheus’. While, for male artist, creation can be modelled on the artificial acts of a patriarchal God, for female, creation is associated with childbirth, of which Shelley had already some experience. The Romantic artist seeks foreign places, sublime and bleak landscapes, apocalyptic worlds of fire and ice, in which extreme spots he, like Walton, hopes to find an image for himself. Like the gothic villain, the Romantic poet is only at home when in exile; alienation is his ‘natural’ state. Dreaming and waking become difficult to distinguish; indeed, as he dreams that the dead are alive, he tries to convince himself that dreams are the reality, and reality a nightmare. The anticipated union of male and female in marriage is replaced with a parodic confusion of all differences.
