Black Prometheus

Jared Hickman is Associate Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University.

• Acknowledgements Introduction Black Prometheus: Race and Radicalism in the Age of Atlantic Slavery Chapter 1 Globalization and the Gods: A Theory of Race and--or as--ModernityChapter 2 The Terms of Prometheus's Liberation: Romanticism, Slavery, and the Titan's TriumphChapter 3 Africa versus the Absolute Idealism and Its OthersChapter 4 The Afro-Promethean "Science of the Stars"Chapter 5 Re-binding Prometheus to the Caucasus: Idealism's Other SolutionChapter 6 Imam Shamil or, the Modern Prometheus of CaucasusChapter 7 Rebellious Fictions: Black Prometheus and the Undoing of the Novelistic FormChapter 8 Byronic Abolitionism Index

In this meticulous treatment, the well-known story of Prometheus becomes the basis for an extensive allegorical and historical investigation into the transatlantic slave trade. Hickman (English, Johns Hopkins Univ.) shrewdly chooses the metaphor, which undergirds the self-referential mythology of European expansionism, subverting it to provide a surprisingly different outlook when moved from identification with the oppressors to identification with the oppressed. ... the idea itself is interesting and fresh ... He shines in matters of literary interpretation and cultural resonance ... The concluding part (of four), "A Literary History of Slave Rebellion," is inspired ... Of most value to scholars of literary theory. ... Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.