Nature, Imagination, and the Sublime Theme Analysis

Shelley viewed nature as a source of poetic and spiritual inspiration, a fact reflected in his extensive use of nature imagery in Prometheus Unbound. The Romantics felt that there was a natural sympathy between emotions, imagination, and the natural world and that natural images were the most intuitive metaphors for describing emotional and psychological states. In his Preface to Prometheus Unbound, Shelley notes that he has composed his poem “upon the mountain ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees.” The inspiration for the poem comes from the arrival of spring in this beautiful landscape and this corresponds with the poem’s themes of “new life” and hope for mankind. Shelley continues such imagery throughout the poem, ultimately suggesting the dependence of humanity on nature and the importance of seeking reverence for rather than dominance over the natural world.

Shelley uses nature imagery and metaphors to convey imaginative sensation to the reader throughout Prometheus Unbound. In Act 1, when Prometheus hears the dead speaking but cannot understand their words, he describes the whispering sound as “tingling” through his frame the way lightening “tingles, hovering ere it strikes.” This suggests that Prometheus is on the brink of understanding the prophecy about himself but that he has not quite been struck by its true meaning. This conveys a recognisable feeling to the reader—when one can almost understand something, but full understanding is just out of reach—through a phenomenon from nature. Humans are also depicted as deeply connected with nature in Prometheus Unbound. Describing the birth of Prometheus—as one of the Titans from classical mythology, the Earth is Prometheus’s mother—the Earth says that “joy ran, as blood within a living frame” when Prometheus, the only hope for humanity, was born. This connects the human body to the planet itself and suggests a correspondence between the physical and emotional health of people and the health of nature and the Earth. The Earth is also enslaved by Jupiter, alongside humanity, describing herself as “linked to some wheel of pain” by the tyrant, which refers to the Earth’s fixed route round the sun. This furthers the metaphor of a connection between humans and their environment.

Although nature is framed as a force which corresponds with and should exist in harmony with humanity in Prometheus Unbound, Jupiter’s tyranny over the Earth has broken this bond between humans and nature and, as a result of this, humanity either struggles with its environment or seeks to destroy, consume, or control it. While Prometheus is chained (representing for Shelley the current state of humanity when he is writing) humanity is out of sync with nature and, therefore, nature presents a threat to humanity as well as a source of inspiration and joy. Since Prometheus has been chained and Jupiter has ruled the Earth, plague and famine have ravaged humanity and plants, which should nourish humans, have been mixed with “poisonous weeds.”

The potential for both beauty and destruction in nature (while Prometheus is chained) is encapsulated in the Romantic idea of the Sublime, in which nature is both an awe-inspiring and an incomprehensible force. A common Romantic metaphor for this is the image of shipwrecks which Shelly uses several times throughout Prometheus Unbound, as the image of a shipwreck symbolizes man’s helplessness in the face of a natural force like the sea. Shelley’s descriptions of “cities sinking in howling ruin” also suggest his hostility towards industrialization and urban expansion. Throughout the nineteenth century, rural agriculture declined consistently while the industrial revolution drove people to the cities where poverty and overcrowding led to disease and terrible living conditions in slums, as well as a diminishing of the surrounding countryside. Shelley’s poem suggests that humans must accept that they will never be able to fully comprehend or control nature and that their arrogance in trying, through technological advancement and industrialization, is a threat to the natural world and to their own existence within it.

Hope to bridge the gap between man and nature comes in the form of poetry, love, and the imagination in Prometheus Unbound. This union is finally achieved when Prometheus is unbound and the Spirit of the Earth runs free again, filling people with wonder at the beauty of the natural world. When Prometheus is visited by the good spirits, one tells him that she has travelled to him from a poet’s lips while he was composing an imaginative work and was immersed in nature. This suggests that the composition of poetry is a virtuous act that advances human society, especially when it is inspired by and draws the reader’s attention to the natural world. Prometheus’s release from the mountain and the fall of Jupiter represent the return of man’s communion with nature and suggests that, from that moment on, humanity will be able to flourish in nature and will no longer struggle with famine, disease, or death, which Prometheus has banished.

The personification of the sun (Apollo) and the Ocean notably rejoice in this renewed harmony between man and nature, delighted that there will be “no more” “blood and groans.” This implies that humanity and nature are profoundly linked and that, when humans mistreat each other, they also mistreat the natural world with which they are joined. This parallels the Christian idea that hurting one person means hurting all humanity, but Shelley extends this idea to the natural world as well. Through his personification of nature in Prometheus Unbound Shelley demonstrates that respect for nature and a better understanding of the natural world, rather than an over-reliance on industrial technology, will renew humanity’s bond with its environment and remind people that, to an extent, nature and humanity rely on each other to survive.