Responsible Creativity and the "Modernity" of Mary Shelley's Prometheus

This article analyzes how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus reconfigures, recontextualizes, and thus "modernizes" the myth of Prometheus. It argues that by focusing on the issues of paternal negligence and the need for responsible creativity, Shelley's novel deconstructs the story of Prometheus as a masculinist narrative of patriarchal authority. It concludes that an examination of the "modernity" of Shelley's Prometheus myth has an impact not only on interpretations of Frankenstein itself, but also on the function of the novel's 1831 preface.