Faber Monstrorum: il mito di Prometeo come archetipo dell’horror

The present article explores the use and development of the image of Prometheus in the horror literature and cinema as one of the most considerable inheritances of the classical heritage in the modern fantastic fiction. It starts with the ambiguity of the Promethean myth (trickster but also patron of mankind) as told by Hesiod, Aeschylus and Plato, focusing on the link between the figure of Prometheus and the idea of human progress, which in the Christian age caused the reinterpretation of the Titan as representation of the savant. After being part of the genetic process for modern myths like the post-Miltonian Satan and Faust, Prometheus is for the first time connected with the image of the villain of an horror story in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, subtitled “The Modern Prometheus”. Since the XIX century Promethean features may be found in the character of the mad scientist described by Hoffmann, Poe, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Wells, Machen, Lovecraft and Bulgakov or pictured in contemporary horror cinema (for example, in many films directed by David Cronenberg).