P B Shelley's Prometheus Unbound: critical analysis

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND": LOOK at ASIA'S LONG SPEECH WHO REIGNS"

The objective of this essay is to examine the work of Shelley entitled: "Prometheus Unbound" and to examine specifically Asia's long speech who reigns in Act II Scene IV. There was Heaven and Earth first…" in Act II Scene IV. Shelley, allegorizing the human mind gives us a kind of fall-myth. but, in his version of human history, what was the fall? What can -- and thinks he will -- repair it? Would the repairing of it be progress? Regress? Or what?

David Bromwich (2002) writes in the work entitled: "Love Against Revenge in Shelley's Prometheus" that Shelley "can disturb one's self-knowledge and even one's idea of what self-knowledge may be; and in reaction against the unheard-of demand he routinely makes, one is apt to dismiss him as extravagant."

Asia's Questions to Demogorgon

The critical essay entitled: "Reading Justice: From Derrida to Shelley and Back" states that in Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" Demogorgon is "the god who orchestrates the underworld of potential beings and events from which the events of the play, such as they are arise. When Asia asks him in Act 2 who created the world and then about the origin of evil, he first replies "God, Almighty God" and "Merciful to questions that invoke the Promethean character of this god. But when Asia asks questions about the origin of evil, questions she puts in terms of the human suffering evil has brought down on the world, Demogorgon shifts to the more gnomic reply "He reigns," which he then repeats without variation." (Studies in Romanticism, 2007)

Asia questions Demogorgon asking him who is "the maker of terror, madness, crime" Demogorgon answers by stating "The deep truth is imageless." (Studies in Romanticism, 2007) the vaguely phrased replies of Demogorgon to the questions of Asia result in stifling the story which Asia focuses on without outright stating it and Demogorgon answering only with "He reigns" to the list of evils that Asia speaks have been wrought upon and within the world effectively manages to avoid naming Prometheus in a direct manner and inferring the creator of all evil is the ruling authority.

II. Mrs. Shelley's Notes

Ratormir Ristic (2000) writes in the work entitled: "Shelley's First Major Lyrics and Prometheus Unbound" that Mary Shelley, in her notes to "Prometheus Unbound" provides an "account of the conditions under which the drama was composed" and states:

"The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before… the poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power." (Ristic, 2000)

While having modeled "Prometheus Unbound" after Aeschylus "Prometheus Bound" the outcome of Aeschylus in which Zeus and Prometheus are reconciled was not a satisfactory outcome to Shelley. Instead, Shelley's version has Prometheus failing to yield to Jupiter (Zeus) however Prometheus does cease to hate Jupiter and because of this "…he himself undergoes a process of transformation and regeneration." (Ristic, 2000)

Mary Shelley writes that it was the belief of Shelley that "…that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none." (Rossetti, 1886) Shelley believed that man could be "so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system." (Rossetti, 1886)

III. Prometheus as the "Mind of Man

The work of William Michael Rossetti (1886) entitled: "Shelley's Prometheus Unbound" states that Prometheus is "the Mind of Man" and while Prometheus is "not in a vague general sense, man, collective humankind; he is the mind of man -- human mind -- the intellect of the race -- that faculty whereby man is man, not brute. The unbinding of Prometheus is the unbinding of the human mind; the deliverance wrought to mankind by the unbinding of Prometheus is the deliverance wrought by man by the unbinding of his mind." (Rossetti, 1886) Mary Shelley's notes on this work relate that her husband had figured "Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator." (Rossetti, 1886) According to Shelley's wife, Shelley chose Prometheus for the hero "a victim full of fortitude who, by transforming himself through a process of self-purification, would defeat the tyrannical god, the principle of evil." (Rossetti, 1886)

Mary Shelley is noted as having stated that it would require "…a mind as subtle as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem." (Rossetti, 1886) Mary writes that rough the whole poem there "There reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love, it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world…" (as cited in: Rossetti, 1886) it is agreed upon by all Shelley critics, according to Ristic that the imagery of the "…lyric built drama is bold and original and that its lyrical splendor is one of the wonders of English poetry. Thirty-six different verse forms have been counted, "all perfectly handled," and the drama has been compared to symphonic music." (Ristic, 2000)

Shelley writes in the Preface to Prometheus Unbound that the "only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus…is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest… highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends." (Shelley as cited in Ristic, 2000) While Shelley does not make any reference to his admiration for Christ and this in spite of Shelley's "hatred of institutional Christianity" there is a great deal of evidence in the Shelley's portrayal of Prometheus of this. (Ristic, 2000)

Asia questions Demogorgon on the nature of God and Demogorgon "refuses to utter his name..." stating only "he reigns" and later adding that "All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil: / Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no…/for Jove is the supreme of living things." (Ristic, ) When Asia asks who the master of the slave is, Demogorgon replies by stating: