Orfeo: A Posthuman Modern Prometheus. Uncommon Powers of Musical Imagination

Abstract At the wake of the twenty-first century, Richard Powers updates Shelley’s motif for the posthumanist context. His novel Orfeo pictures Peter Els; an aged, American version of Viktor Frankenstein, as he runs away from Homeland Security after 9/11. His crime is having composed the musical masterpiece of his life by altering the DNA of a bacteria, which is mistaken for an act of bioterrorism. Powers’ novel looks back at Shelley’s existentialist concerns about the ethical dimension of a creative freedom that questions the very limits of humanity. The parallelisms between both novels go beyond the development of this motif and deep into the structural arrangement of plot and character development to suggest that Shelley’s narrative lies behind the thematic and compositional arrangement of Powers’ work, and evidence the endurance of Shelley’s literary impact.1