Prometheus Unbound

In Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, the Titan Prometheus is chained to a cliff in the Indian Caucasus, a mountain range now known as the Hindu Kush that stretches from modern-day China through Afghanistan and Pakistan. Aeschylus’ original play also situates Prometheus in the Caucasus, but in what is now the nation of Georgia. Shelley’s decision to move the setting eastward connects Prometheus to knowledge and the rise of civilization.

Eighteenth- and 19th-century scholars like German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel believed in the since-discredited idea of Indigenous Aryanism. According to this pseudoscientific theory, a group of so-called “Aryans” traveled from the Indian subcontinent to Europe, bringing their advanced civilization with them and originating modern European languages. Further, geographers of Shelley’s time wrongly believed that the headwaters of all of the rivers in Asia were in the Indian Caucasus mountains. From these mistaken ideas, we get the term “Caucasian” to denote white people.

Based on these misconceptions about language, geography, and civilization, Shelley set his place in the place from which he believed knowledge stems and life-giving water emerges. Thus, when Prometheus is released and his knowledge is transmitted worldwide, it spreads westward. Further, just as Prometheus brings new intellectual life to the people, the waters flowing from the mountain range bring life to Asia, both the figure in the play and the geographical location.