GRK 387 Prometheus: The Agony of the Absolute
“The origins of the myth of Prometheus,” it has been said, “are unclear; even in antiquity the story is never told in full.” Right from the beginning, it would seem, Prometheus arrives on the scene of literature in a torn, dismembered condition, his story diffracted from the outset into a multiplicity of incoherent elements and perspectives: is he a mighty Titan, or merely a trickster? a divine benefactor, or a threat to cosmic peace? an embodiment of the power of thought, or a figure of its eternal helplessness and misery? The primary object of this course, which will be taught in conjunction with CSLC 187, will be to survey some of the more impressive and surprising ways in which literature, art, and philosophy have engaged with, and contributed to, the strangeness of this myth of Prometheus--a figure who, as we shall discover, is as much a source of agony to the Absolute, as he is agonized by it.
While reading the later receptions of the Prometheus myth along with their counterparts in CSLC 187 (in the works of Goethe, Shelley, Melville, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others), this five-unit, Ancient Greek section of the class will additionally read the ancient texts covered in class (Prometheus Bound, as well as selected excerpts from Hesiod and Plato) in their original Greek form.
Students completing the final paper in this course with a grade of C or higher can use this work to satisfy the Second Stage Writing requirement.