The Promethean Politics of Milton, Blake, and Shelley by Linda M. Lewis (review)

88Rocky Mountain Review The new man—or woman—is the theme of this book of conversations; it is a human being who is the result of larger migratory movements in cultural , geographic, and linguistic patterns. FRANCISCO J. SÁNCHEZ Denison University LINDA M. LEWIS. The Promethean Politics of Milton, Blake, and Shelley. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992. 223 p. In her dissertation-based study, Linda M. Lewis traces the Prometheus myth from Greek drama through Romanticism to show the ways in which various writers adapt the myth as a vehicle for their own political views. Unlike earlier scholars, Lewis stresses an important ambiguity that persists in literary depictions of Prometheus and his theft of divine fire: Prometheus is either a benefactor and savior or a trickster and destructive rebel. In chapters devoted to Aeschylus, Dante, Milton, Blake, and Shelley, Lewis shows how these writers all re-envision the myth to examine the nature of tyranny and rebellion, whether it is "preferable to yield to the powers that be, to take arms against the regime currently in power, to employ passive resistance, or to reconstitute the mental notion of authority" (7). Rather than presenting a source study on the myth, Lewis studies the ways in which the poets rework the mythical material to comment upon 1) the relationships of mortals to God and human political systems to a cosmic system ; 2) the nature and abuse of power; 3) the deprivation of power and the political and spiritual condition of the powerless; 4) the hope or despair of the political radical; 5) the works of earlier writers who have employed the double view of Prometheus as the destroyer, the thief who stole the divine fire, versus the giver of divine light. While earlier writers had treated Prometheus as an upstart who gets his just deserts, Aeschylus sees Prometheus as giving a host ofgifts to mankind including prophecy, intelligence, and understanding. He uses the stealing of the divine fire as the symbol for all sorts of enlightenment which give mankind hope of triumph over the gods. In contrast, Dante sees Prometheus' rebellion as a violation of the divine plan and has him repent. Milton draws on the two traditions of Prometheus as destroyer and creator in Paradise Lost by making Satan a thief, sophist, and rebel, while Christ the savior represents the positive aspects ofthe Prometheus myth. Lewis sees Promethean fire as the pivotal icon in William Blake's writing and finds critics have overlooked the extent to which Blake reworks mythical material from Milton into one universal spirit. While Ore repeatedly reappears in the Blakean canon as the Promethean figure for active revolution , Los ultimately represents Promethean love, identifying with man's moral attributes and "loving mankind beyond all measure" (112). According to Lewis, "No doubt one can comprehend Blake's political iconoclasm and his revisionist view of God, Christ, and Satan without perceiving just how Book Reviews89 cleverly he is revising and undermining Dante's and Milton's iconography." Understanding Blake's "manipulation of the tradition" clarifies "the multivalent levels of meaning in Blake's prophetic texts" (155). Shelley modifies the received myth, making Prometheus "a prototype of passive resistance, forgiveness, and love" (157). He repents his rebellion and takes back his vengeful pronouncements against Jupiter. In Prometheus Unbound, he shares blame with Jupiter for having caused universal human suffering and deprivation, and because he gave Jupiter power, he is guilty for making him master. Like Blake, Shelley concludes that "revolution to perfection is only possible in the human consciousness" (157). Unlike Stephen Curran who sees in Shelley's Prometheus "traces of self-pity and condescension" (Shelley's Annus Mirabilis, San Marino, CA: Huntington, 1975, 130), Lewis idealizes him. Here, perhaps, she stretches her case in failing to see touches of hubris and self-aggrandizement of earlier Promethean figures in Shelley's Prometheus. Although Lewis cites Harold Bloom as concluding that the Promethean imagery has run its course (193), she believes either that late nineteenthcentury industrial and scientific progress did not promote Prometheanism or that, because nineteenth-century feminists such as Mary Shelley and the Brontes used Prometheanism as a "metaphor for sexual politics" (194), the icon lost its attractiveness...