Prometheus Bound + Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, translated by Thomas Medwin & Percy Bysshe Shelley + Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited and with Foreword by John Lauritsen.This book contains two major works. The first is the Aeschylus play, Prometheus Bound, masterfully translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley and his cousin, Thomas Medwin. The second is Shelley's own poem, Prometheus Unbound, which is considered his masterpiece. This book also includes an appreciation of Prometheus Unbound by John Addington Symonds and the poem Prometheus by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, newly translated from the German.Editor John Lauritsen demonstrates, through biographical and textual evidence, that Shelley was the chief author of the Prometheus translation, which is a masterpiece in its own right. Shelley worked on it for years, engrossed by the theme of rebellion against tyranny dominant in the Aeschylus play and the poems by Goethe and himself.Comparisons between the Medwin-Shelley translation of Prometheus Bound and Shelley's own Prometheus Unbound show Shelley's amazing versatility at versification; he was the master of more verse forms than any other poet in English. Above all, they display Shelley's gift for dialogue, which he elsewhere demonstrated in his translations from Plato and Goethe; his play, The Cenci; and his novels.The unjustly forgotten Medwin-Shelley translation is still unequaled for dramatic power and poetry. It is one of the few translations that could effectively be put on the stage. Read more