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11 - Space, Place and the Metallurgical Imagination of the Prometheus Trilogy

from Part III - Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2019

David Braund
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Edith Hall
Affiliation:
King's College London
Rosie Wyles
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
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Summary

This chapter takes as its springboard the cognitive stimuli of the Prometheus opening scene, both the visual and aural experience of metal pounding on metal and the heavily symbolic space of Prometheus’ shackling, and explores their meaning more widely in relation to each other, to the entire play and to the trilogy as a whole. It examines the possibility that the evocation of metalworking through sight and sound and the choice of spaces in the Prometheus Bound and in its trilogy are suggestive of the importance of metallurgy and metalworking in the Athenian imagination in relation to the areas surrounding the Black Sea. As will be argued, the Black Sea was perceived by the Greeks as an area rich in mineral ores and even richer in the knowledge of the wondrous art of metallurgy. In light of the deep symbolism that the collective imagination had attached to metallurgy for millennia, and especially to the significance of metal in the creation of the order of the cosmos, the choice of spectacle and spaces in the Prometheus trilogy offers further evidence of the way the Black Sea was imagined by fifth-century Greeks. This, in turn, may contribute to better understandings of the play’s meaning and, possibly, to the lost trilogy’s meaning as a whole.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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