Shelley's poems not only represent the advanced ideas of Britain, The Romantic Period and Europe, but also achieve great success in art. He is one of the best lyric poets in the history of English literature. ..... In Prometheus Liberated, readers can easily find that in his charming poems, there is often a noble thought shining.
-A General History of English Literature
Percy bysshe shelley is a great poet, thinker and reformer in The Romantic Period, England. He lived less than 30 years, but he wrote for more than ten years. However, he is not only an important pioneer of English positive romantic literature, but also one of the most outstanding lyric poets in the history of world literature.
The name "Shelley" is always associated with freedom, equality, kindness, struggle and rebellion. His poetry is the pinnacle in the history of English poetry, and its rich imagination, harmonious rhyme, wonderful metaphor and profound philosophy are rare. As the greatest lyric poet in Britain in the19th century, and the leader of the British romantic movement who is equally famous with Byron, Shelley was praised as a "real revolutionary" by Marx and Engels. His poems expressed the most advanced ideas in Europe at that time, which was most obvious in the poetic drama Prometheus Liberated.
18 18 Shelley settled in Italy and completed the lyric drama Prometheus Liberated. Taking Greek and Roman mythology as the theme, the play depicts the story of Prometheus, the hero who stole fire for mankind, who was indomitable and finally liberated by the forces of nature, pinning the poet's yearning for a glorious and ideal society full of love and expressing the poet's utopian socialist thought. It is not only the peak of the poet's creation, but also a model of romantic poetry creation, and a masterpiece of modern poets integrating Greek form and modern revolutionary thoughts.
Prometheus Liberated is an important masterpiece of Shelley and a masterpiece of world literature. Jupiter (Zeus), the Lord of the gods, ascended the throne with the help of the giant Prometheus, but he broke the promise of "giving freedom to mankind" and exercised autocratic rule, which brought pain and disaster to mankind. In order to save mankind, Prometheus stole the fire of wisdom from heaven and passed on scientific and cultural knowledge and production skills to mankind. The cruel Jupiter held a grudge and locked Prometheus on the Caucasus cliff at the ends of the earth and tortured him, but Prometheus persevered and fought to the end. Just when Jupiter was proud, his son Pluto threw Jupiter from the throne into the abyss of hell with lightning speed. Hercules released Prometheus from the cliff. After he sent an elf to announce the news of liberation to the whole world, the whole universe was bathed in the glory of "love".
Although the work shows the myth of romanticism, it is rooted in reality and is a tortuous reflection of class struggle and the poet's political thought in real life. As the author said in the preface: "Many of the images I have created are derived from human inner activities or their external behaviors." The author wrote this play with "the desire to improve the world" in order to "let readers who love poetry remember some noble and beautiful ideals in their meticulous minds". Under the cloak of romantic myth, the work truly exposes the pain and disaster brought by authoritarian rule to the working people, praises the people's indomitable revolutionary spirit and heroism against authoritarian rule, and expresses the poet Shelley's lofty political ideal of establishing a free and equal beautiful society.
Britain completed the bourgeois revolution as early as17th century.1In the 1960s, the industrial revolution flourished, relying on the strength of the masses to overthrow the feudal rule and seize the bourgeois regime, and making use of the big machine of capitalist industrialization to produce cruel exploitation and enslavement of workers in order to earn more profits. The bourgeois revolution did not break the shackles of the working people, and the industrial revolution did not improve the material and cultural living standards of the working class. On the contrary, it brought unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy, hunger, disease and death. /kloc-At the beginning of the 0/9th century, the contradictions and conflicts between the working class and the bourgeoisie became increasingly obvious, and machine smashing incidents and strike struggles occurred constantly. Shelley's Prometheus Liberated was written under such a historical background.
In the poetic drama, Shelley broke through the shackles of bourgeois reformism and clearly affirmed the problem of overthrowing autocratic rule by violent means. Pluto in the poem is the product of the combination of Jupiter and Tethys. Tethys is stronger and more powerful than Jupiter, representing "eternal inevitability". "After fierce fighting", he finally buried Jupiter in the abyss of hell. In Shelley's early poetry creation, he once revealed the reformist thought of denying revolutionary violence. He advocated using reason as a weapon and using moral education to persuade and impress the oppressors to turn over a new leaf and realize social justice. However, the harsh facts of class struggle taught him that this road is impassable! Because autocratic rule will never automatically withdraw from the historical stage, only through violent revolution can we overthrow autocratic rule and liberate the oppressed working people. This fundamental change in Shelley's thought makes the ideological content of Prometheus Liberated more profound and revolutionary.
In the poetic drama, Shelley also focuses on the new atmosphere on the earth after Jupiter was overthrown and Prometheus was liberated-a world of great harmony without class, country, oppression and exploitation, where everyone is equal, free and loves each other. It is in sharp contrast with dark kingdom under the rule of Jupiter in the capitalist world at that time, which reflects the poet's dissatisfaction with the real society, his fantasy of a better future and his optimistic belief in a better future. Of course, the social blueprint described by Shelley does not go beyond the bourgeois "rational kingdom" model with the slogan of "freedom, equality and fraternity", but only belongs to the category of utopian socialism. But under the historical conditions at that time, this is commendable. Engels praised Shelley as a "genius prophet", which is the reason.