44 pages • 1-hour read
Prometheus Unbound
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PrefaceChapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
Percy Bysshe Shelley has decided to write his own take on Aeschylus’s Prometheus Unbound, just as ancient authors often rewrote and adapted Greek myths. In the original play, Jupiter pardons Prometheus in exchange for information: Prometheus foretells Jupiter’s downfall at the hands of his son with the sea nymph Thetis, so Jupiter marries Thetis to Peleus instead, and then allows Hercules to liberate Prometheus. However, Shelley feels “averse” to this ending as it reconciles “the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind” (Preface, Lines 27-28).
Shelley compares Prometheus to Satan as portrayed in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), as both characters courageously rebel against omnipotent deities. He argues that Prometheus is more admirable and interesting than Satan: Because Prometheus does not act out of personal ambition or revenge, he is “the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature” (Preface, Line 49).
Shelley wrote the poem amidst the ruins of the Roman baths in Rome, and he credits the setting for inspiration. Using Dante and the Greek poets as models, Shelley has included highly imaginary, rather than realistic, imagery in the poem.
He addresses a popular literary critique of the time—that writers imitate their contemporary peers, specifically Milton. He argues that English literature is not “the product of the imitation of any particular writer” (Preface, Lines 96-97), but rather the result of a societal revolt against the “most oppressive form of the Christian religion” (Preface, Line 109). He also argues that “poetry is a mimetic art” that combines existing literary elements and structures in novel ways (Preface, Line 120). Poets, like other artists, reflect the world around them, including the literary influences in which they are surrounded.
Shelley explains his motivation for writing. While encouraging social reform is important, he does not want to be prescriptive. Rather, he wants to show examples of moral excellence while accurately representing human society. He recognizes that he might fail in his efforts, and he begs his critics to be charitable in their assessment of his attempts.
Preface Analysis
Shelley justifies rewriting the classic mythology as a way to indirectly portray his political and moral ideals, underlining the use of Myth Rewritten as Political Allegory at a time when direct advocacy for republicanism and liberal values in England could lead to severe criticism or even legal persecution. Given his intentions, it might seem contradictory for Shelley to insist he rejects didactic poetry, or poetry designed to teach a religious or moral lesson. This rejection of a form already falling out of favor in the early 19th century is partly strategic on Shelley’s part: To highlight the freshness of his political ideas, he is also embracing the newly growing emphasis on the importance of personal expression in poetry. Poetry about beauty, perfection, and the sublimity of nature and human interiority—a movement known as Romanticism—was coming into fashion. Shelley’s work does have a moral and does instruct his readers, but Shelley does not intend to subordinate aesthetic elements to the dissemination of his message that poetry could form the foundation of a more just and civil world.
The overwhelming tone of the Preface is one of defensiveness. Shelley feels compelled to preemptively argue for his use of form, subject matter, and his extensive drawing on existing literary precedents. Shelley was in part responding to a critique by the writer and jurist John Taylor Coleridge that Shelley “degraded and perverted” (23) the work of famed English poet William Wordsworth, a Romantic of the previous generation. This insult greatly wounded Shelley’s pride. He primarily speaks to two potential critiques of Prometheus Unbound: that he has taken great liberties in rewriting Aeschylus and that he is cribbing from Milton’s Paradise Lost (see Background). Shelley counters by highlighting his view that poetry is a mimetic form, meaning that it copies and pulls inspiration from many sources, including other literary works. Essentially, Shelley sees creativity as a series of interlocking influences, with each work of art shaped simultaneously by the artist, the other works around it, and by the material world. The combination of these elements into a new form is what makes a piece have value.
Shelley acknowledges similarities between his work and Milton’s epic. In Milton’s portrayal, Satan is a Promethean figure who bestows God’s forbidden secrets onto humanity by encouraging Eve, the first human woman, to bite into the Fruit of Knowledge. Similarly, in Greek mythology, Prometheus brings fire to the first humans, an act symbolic of enlightenment. Both Satan and Prometheus incur the unyielding wrath of the divine, and both are associated with light: Prometheus is known as the light-bringer, while Satan’s other name, Lucifer, means “light-bringer” in Latin. Like Prometheus Unbound, Paradise Lost is a political allegory embedded within a mythopoetic adaptation. However, this conflation of genres traces as far back as Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE). However, there is one important divergence between Shelley and Milton: Where Milton’s Satan is a complex figure whose interiority is key to understanding the entire work, Shelley’s Prometheus has little psychological depth and mostly exists as an ideal of noble suffering for the sake of liberty.
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