Prometheus Archetypal Image of Human Existence

E-237: Pantheon Books. Very Good. 1963. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Pantheon Books, New York. 1963. Xxvi, 152 pages. Bollingen Series LXV. First Edition/First printing. Bound in hessian boards with red cloth spine. Spine label present to the spine. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. Previous owner's bookplate present to the reverse of the front board. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. Prometheus the god stole fire from heaven and bestowed it on humans. In punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock, where an eagle clawed unceasingly at his liver, until Herakles freed him. For the Greeks, the myth of Prometheus's release reflected a primordial law of existence and the fate of humankind. Carl Kerényi examines the story of Prometheus and the very process of mythmaking as a reflection of the archetypal function and seeks to discover how this primitive tale was invested with a universal fatality, first in the Greek imagination, and then in the Western tradition of Romantic poetry. Kerényi traces the evolving myth from Hesiod and Aeschylus, and in its epic treatment by Goethe and Shelley; he moves on to consider the myth from the perspective of Jungian psychology, as the archetype of human daring signifying the transformation of suffering into the mystery of the sacrifice. EB; 9.0 X 6.0 X 0.5 inches; 152 pages .