Love as Gravitational Attraction in Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound

thirst for communion" tracks with Shelley's personal philosophies as well as Prometheus' situation in the beginning of the play.This article begins with the premise that Shelley used romantic love as a gravitational force that altered physical reality in Prometheus Unbound -specifically looking at Romantic Naturphilosophie concepts of attraction and repulsion that result in various forms of matter, including al-chemical transformations in both mind (mental) and matter (physical).With relevant background on Romantic era science, the relation between chemical and alchemical philosophies establishes the argument for reading Prometheus' love for Asia as a force of gravitational attraction that creates reality anew.For Shelley, love is transcendent (Ideal) and gravitational (real), because the inherent non-locality of the transcendent allows for the forces of attraction and repulsion which combine to form matter. Taking a note from Naturphilosophie, if one (say, a mythological hero) wants to effect change on a massive scale, Romantic natural philosophy demands gravitational attraction, which, in itself requires a multiscale structure; i.e., an everyday world of appearance and materiality as well as a transcendent Idealism of concepts that exist only as potential, so that the actual may continue to emerge in new (hopefully improved) iterations.Shelley's Prometheus Unbound is built upon a framework that bridges such dualistic thinking that otherwise separates the Ideal and the real, subjective and objective, unknown and known, and utilizes Naturphilosophie concepts 2 to expand our understanding of the deep interconnectedness between mind and matter.When we combine these apparent opposites, we have a philosophical superorganism in which love can affect massive system changes vis--vis an ekstatic, multiscale system and those emotions, likewise, become imbued with more weight (hence, reading gravity as physical and metaphorical).In Martin Heidegger's ontico-ontological "ecstatic horizonal unity of temporality," the transcendent frame, or referent, is essential for the everyday to exist at all, but, as I have argued elsewhere, the everyday is also able to affect changes in the transcendent horizon (Cuthbertson).Hugh Roberts wrangles with this issue when he writes that critics' "'nontranscendental' version of Shelley [] sees him as an insistently skeptical subverter of all stable signification, metaphorically 'transforming' and 'transferring' meaning so as to undermine any claims to eternally valid 'truths'" (156).I seek to contribute the idea that such eternally valid truths alwaysalready include everyday alchemical permutations. 3 To set up my arguments, I will give a brief overview of Romantic era science as relevant to this article, as well as the impact of medieval philosophies of science and love on Shelley.In my first major section, I examine how romantic love functions as an ekstatic, non-local entanglement through which the drama's characters utilize a multiscale existence to shift their earthly reality to the higher-dimensional paradise.In section two, I discuss the concept of individual perception in Romantic philosophy and science, exploring further the power of thought and language to transform the lovers' experience of reality.Thereafter I explore how Romantic era scientists believed that electromagnetism comprised everything from individual consciousness to physical matter, essentially granting Prometheus and Asia the possibility to alter their physical realities through their mental and emotional states of mind.In conclusion, I summarize how the Naturphilosophie concepts of attraction and repulsion create all matter and connect the earthly to a higher-dimensional paradise owing to individual perception that alchemizes free will and individual desire into experiential materiality

Art · Astronomy · Attraction · Gravitation · Linguistics · Physics · Philosophy · Science Education and Perceptions

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