In my thesis, I focus on Aeschylus and Shelley's treatment of the Prometheus myth. Both
authors rely on the story of Prometheus chained on the highest peak of the Caucasus,
omitting the account of the reasons for his punishment given by the 7th century BC poet
Hesiod in Theogony and Works and Days. The reason for Prometheus' punishment is the
inequality in the sharing of the sacrificial shares in the Mekong and the theft of the fire from
the people. The Prometheus Unlocked (date unknown) and the Prometheus Liberated (1820)
are quite different, despite their many intertextual references.
To help you understand the literary-historical context, let me begin by briefly outlining the
essential features of ancient Greek and Romantic literature. Initially, I am focusing on the
treatment of the tragedy of Aeschylus. I am concerned with the question of Aeschylus'
authorship, with some of the more important thematic elements of his tragedy, and with the
reception of myth in the Greek poet Hesiod. In what follows, I argue why, according to many
literary theorists, the Romantic is the most important for the reworking of the Prometheus
myth. The following is a comparison of the drama structures and the conflict. Here I draw on
Aristotle's definition of tragedy and Hegel's theory of tragic reconciliation. In the chapter on
the characterization of the title character, I introduce him first through the type of the
deceiver, then through the cultural hero, and finally through the loving subject who came into
his own at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century.
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