The Morphology of Prometheus, Literary Geography and the Geoethical Project

This paper explores mappings, musings and ‘thought experiments’ in literary geography to consider how they may contribute geoethical pedagogy research. Representations of Prometheus from the fourteenth century onwards have traveled along three broad symbological roads: first, as creator, bringer fire; second a bound figure chains, thirdly, unbound. However, it was harnessing fire by our species millennium prior that gave rise myth set into motion geophysical process combustion which “facilitated transformation much terrestrial surface […] pushed parameters earth system new geological epoch.” As geophysicist Professor Michael Mann observes, global warming loss biodiversity constitutes an ethical problem. The remediation Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or modern (1818), Jonathan Fetter-Vorm’s Trinity: A Graphic History First Atomic Bomb (2012) William Golding’s novel Lord Flies (1954) provides means explore geographical, historical cultural contingencies dilemmas contributing framing Anthropocene Gaia heuristics. argues for necessity scholars arts, humanities geosciences share exchange idiographic nomothetic perspectives order forge dialectic fuses poetic positivistic methods transcendent ontologies epistemologies address existential questions we enter age Anthropocene.