Prometheus the god stole fire from heaven and bestowed it on humans. In punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock, where an eagle clawed unceasingly at his liver, until Herakles freed him. For the Greeks, the myth of Prometheus's release reflected a primordial law of existence and the fate of humankind. Carl Kerenyi examines the story of Prometheus and the very process of mythmaking as a reflection of the archetypal function and seeks to discover how this primitive tale was invested with a universal fatality, first in the Greek imagination, and then in the Western tradition of Romantic poetry. Kerenyi traces the evolving myth from Hesiod and Aeschylus, and in its epic treatment by Goethe and Shelley; he moves on to consider the myth from the perspective of Jungian psychology, as the archetype of human daring signifying the transformation of suffering into the mystery of the sacrifice.
- ISBN10 069101907X
- ISBN13 9780691019079
- Publish Date 30 November 1997
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Princeton University Press
- Edition Revised edition
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 184
- Language English
- URL https://press.princeton.edu/titles/6167.html