8 - Percy Shelley’s Sad Exile

Summary

This chapter situates Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound in the sociopolitical contexts of the Romantic “age of exile.” It argues that the drama centers on what Shelley calls “sad exile,” a phrase that deliberately toggles between the archaic and traditional meanings of “sad” as both sorrowful and steadfast. In the play, sad exile registers as an ambivalent process that neither ends nor anticipates a return to a former state or place. Rather, it becomes fundamental to maintaining the renovated society’s mutually determined livelihood. As an ongoing re-visionary and recalibrating condition, this method of self-inquiry and critical distancing permits the drama’s key transformation from complicity to collaboration.