Prometheus

"Prometheus" is a comic epic written as a sonnet sequence around a Greek myth. Like Hesiod's, the poem deals with enlightenment and the creation of the first woman, Pandora; but it uses stories from modern Greek oral tradition to report the revolutionary effects of Prometheus's gifts. The result is a commentary about progress as well as an aetiological myth about the transformation of paganism into Christianity. Built on such themes as the paradox of free will and the effect of entropy on the moral order of the Universe, the poem is ironic, playful, humane and musical. The poem merges the Romantic and Classical elements of Anglo poetry, sundered since Blake and Milton.