Aeschylus' 'Prometheus Bound': Building a framework for successive interpretations of man's relationship to the deity and the universe

摘要

Reading Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (460-50 BCE) prompts the following questions. First, how does Prometheus' gift to man of hope, fire and knowledge affect the relationship of man to the deity and the universe? Secondly what are the consequences of his necessity to act to be true to himself? Vernant and Vidal-Naquet in Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece note that the questions dramatized in the play on "the relations between power and knowledge and between the political and technological functions are ones that never cease to be problematic". The play presents this conflict as a debate between authority and intelligence against a stark background.;My thesis will argue that the only way to address these questions is by opening the text to trans-historical interpretations from different periods and literary styles. With Aeschylus as a starting point, I will direct attention to two later versions of the myth to see how they answer or add to the complexity of the questions. The first, Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1818) portrays Prometheus as a romantic champion of mankind. Shelley's interpretation will be compared with Robert Lowell's rebel against a political tyrant in his Prometheus Bound (1969). In looking backwards and forwards in retellings of Aeschylus' play the reader can discover what is distinctive about each and attempt to answer the questions the myth raises.;Vernant proposes that the means to understanding is to open up a classic text through successive interpretations. A framework can be built on words from the texts, how they are used and what meanings can be drawn from them. My thesis will have the following framework; transgressive language, necessity and anger, hope's evolving complexity and sacrifice sacred and profane.;Opening the text includes examination of the use of words in a poetic setting and in the social, psychological frames of reference. Bernard Williams writes that a reader will recognize "an identity of content, and that recognition goes beyond simply the acknowledgement of a hidden motive that we share with the ancients, the thrill of the nerve touched by the deconstructionist's probe." One of the goals of this paper will be to identify that content in Prometheus Bound that we share with the Greeks. In that identification which moves from Aeschylus to Shelley to Lowell, we can recognize ourselves.