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<p>This paper offers a comparative literary analysis of Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> (1818) and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s <i>The Time Regulation Institute</i> (1961), focusing on their engagement with the Promethean myth as a lens to critique modernity, creation, and responsibility. By drawing upon archetypal and structuralist myth criticism, as well as Turkish literary scholarship, the study reveals how each author reconfigures the Promethean archetype in distinct cultural and historical contexts. In <i>Frankenstein</i>, Shelley presents a tragic Prometheus in the figure of Victor Frankenstein, whose scientific overreach and emotional negligence result in ethical catastrophe, thereby exposing the gendered politics and moral limitations of Enlightenment and Romantic ideals. Conversely, Tanpınar’s satirical portrayal of modernization in Republican Turkey turns the Promethean figure into a bureaucratic reformer, Halit Ayarcı, whose well-intentioned yet hollow social engineering project leads to absurdity and alienation. The analysis examines themes such as the ethics of creation, the father-child dynamic, modernization as myth, and the satirical inversion of heroism. While Shelley’s novel critiques the solitary, male creative genius through Gothic tragedy, Tanpınar undermines the myth of progress via comedic irony. The juxtaposition underscores how mythic structures remain fertile grounds for addressing cultural contradictions—between science and morality, and between imported modernity and indigenous identity. Ultimately, the paper argues that both novels extend the Promethean myth into a modern parable, interrogating not just the act of creation but its aftermath and ethical burdens.</p>

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The fire and the clock: Promethean myth in Mary Shelley and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月19日

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  • Tuncer Yılmaz

摘要

This paper offers a comparative literary analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s The Time Regulation Institute (1961), focusing on their engagement with the Promethean myth as a lens to critique modernity, creation, and responsibility. By drawing upon archetypal and structuralist myth criticism, as well as Turkish literary scholarship, the study reveals how each author reconfigures the Promethean archetype in distinct cultural and historical contexts. In Frankenstein, Shelley presents a tragic Prometheus in the figure of Victor Frankenstein, whose scientific overreach and emotional negligence result in ethical catastrophe, thereby exposing the gendered politics and moral limitations of Enlightenment and Romantic ideals. Conversely, Tanpınar’s satirical portrayal of modernization in Republican Turkey turns the Promethean figure into a bureaucratic reformer, Halit Ayarcı, whose well-intentioned yet hollow social engineering project leads to absurdity and alienation. The analysis examines themes such as the ethics of creation, the father-child dynamic, modernization as myth, and the satirical inversion of heroism. While Shelley’s novel critiques the solitary, male creative genius through Gothic tragedy, Tanpınar undermines the myth of progress via comedic irony. The juxtaposition underscores how mythic structures remain fertile grounds for addressing cultural contradictions—between science and morality, and between imported modernity and indigenous identity. Ultimately, the paper argues that both novels extend the Promethean myth into a modern parable, interrogating not just the act of creation but its aftermath and ethical burdens.