Lecture 8 - Romanticism (but mostly this dude Prometheus)

A lecture doesn't often start with music from a Beethoven opera but it makes a nice change. The music in question was the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, composed in 1801, right in the heart of the Romantic movement. This week's lecture was delivered by a guest, Dr Gary Farnell of the British Association for Romantic Studies who also doubles up as the head of English Literature at the University of Winchester. He began by telling us all about the legend of Prometheus, how he stole fire from the Gods to give it to mankind, how he was punished by Jupiter, chained to a rock and a vulture tearing out his liver for 30 years. Prometheus then is a symbol of the Romantic movement, all about the renewal of humanity and the creation of mankind; the themes at the heart of the Prometheus legend.

Prometheus is an extremely old story, dating back to Greek Mythology, who came back to the fore during the Romantic movement and was adopted as a God of Romanticism. Several figures in the movement used the legend as the basis of their works; for example Lord Byron's Prometheus (inventive name), Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and his other half, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, often known as The Modern Prometheus. The character of Prometheus is the champion of oppressed human kind according to Romanticism, a God who embodies the spirit of 'liberty, equality and fraternity', a quote from the French Revolution of 1789. On a slightly related topic, Percy Shelley is quoted as having said to Byron in 1816 that "the French Revolution is the master theme of the epoch in which we live." This doesn't seem so ridiculous if you've read my previous blog but it is quite interesting to note that Percy Shelley was not even born until 1792. The revolution passed him by without direct effect on his life and even he knows how important it is.
*Note to self: Do more study on the Revolution, I'm sensing a theme emerging*

Continuing with our new found friend Percy Shelley I'm going to briefly look at one of his poems, written in 1818, which links directly to Prometheus in its themes, maybe his most famous poem, Ozymandias. The poem is infused with a revolutionary spirit within the form of a sonnet (the form will become more relevant later) and focuses on the 13th Century BC Egyptian Pharaoh Ozymandias, better known as Rameses II. It was composed after a visit to the British Museum where there stands a huge bust of Rameses II and is written as a critique of Empires like that of Ozymandias which were 'built on sand' quite literally and, if you were trying to be clever which I do every now and then, also could link to the imperial power at the time of the British Empire. Bit of a curveball there but there is a suggestion in the poem of a link between the Museum and Empire, the whole notion of taking artefacts from their natural home to exhibit them for their own purposes is rejected by Shelley, linking back to the 'empires on the sand' idea, it suggests that however powerful an Empire is, their time will always come to an end. Shelley uses the form of a sonnet ironically as sonnets usually elevate their subject, such as in the form of all the Shakespearean love sonnets, and reverses it, critiquing the whole idea of Empires and calling for a new beginning; very revolutionary. As a side note, you can see the poem resonating in connection to the Egyptian revolution of the last month in which a tyrannical 'King of Kings' type character was overthrown; the spirit of Prometheanism is alive in Egypt.

We now move from Shelley's Political Prometheanism to Aesthetic Prometheanism, the notion of making or creating things, like humankind, which further inspires Romantic writers. Writers like John Keats for example and, in particular, his 1819 poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn which rather inconveniently for him has now turned out to be a Roman 2nd Century AD urn, known as the Townley Vase, but never mind. Once again, it is a poem inspired by a visit to the British Museum but instead of looking at the notion of empires, it examines the art of the vase. Its form acknowledges an element of self conscious artifice in the artistic set of creation, and is an opportunity for Keats to demonstrate his poetic skills in celebrating the artistry of the urn. In the poem it is worth noting the finely turned phrases, use of personification, artificially alternating line length, all evident within the first lines

"Thou still unravished bride of quietness and slow time
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme –"

These are all signifiers of Keats' creativity and this creativity in turn is an example of the sanctification of the human ability to make or create. The final lines of the poem, '"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"; that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know' illustrate the poem better than I ever could.

As a final point, the superiority of art in Romantic Aestheticism is in obvious relation with Hegel and Kant of the German idealist school of philosophy but for more on that, you'll just have to wait for my seminar paper which will be posted sometime in the next week. Returning to Prometheus, he signifies the bringing together of the two elements of Romanticism, the political and the aesthetic. I'll leave you with a quote from Lord Byron's Prometheus, "Thou art a symbol and a sign / To mortals of their fate and force."

Until next time. Stay Classy Internet