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'Prince poli & savant': Goethe's Prometheus and the enlightenment.(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

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From: The Modern Language Review
Date: 20040401
Author:Jolle, Jonas

The present reading of Goethe's 'Prometheus' sets out to examine the new work to which the myth is put in the poem. His 'Prometheus' does not stand in a modern opposition to classical accounts of the myth. The poem rather establishes itself at the forefront of a long reinterpretative tradition engaging with the Prometheus story. Often read as an agent provocateur in the German Enlightenment project, Goethe's Prometheus nevertheless argues like a rationalist critic of religion while instructing humans in social behaviour. To an extent hitherto largely ignored, the poem ...

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