"As a female foreigner whose relationship with Jason was only formalized with the birth of the children, Medea would have been viewed as an irregular companion, and after Jason's betrothal to Glauce, she would be reduced to the status of concubine." Continue Reading...
Medea's Children: Revenge And Euthanasia
Over the course of Euripides' play Medea, the protagonist makes five truly significant speeches which seem to provide the outline for the plot. In these speeches Medea addresses the audience or the chorus of Continue Reading...
Freudian theory believes that extreme suffering removes own from the tamed state which each individual resides within civilization, "Just as satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering caused us if the external world lets u Continue Reading...
Medea: A Woman Scorned
Only an extraordinary woman is capable of killing her own children, whether to save them from something worse or not. Euripides confronts ancient Greece with a woman who is exceptionally intelligent. And also angry because her Continue Reading...
Though Medea has been repeatedly referred to as a 'witch' with magical powers, she being the niece of Circe, she is, first and foremost, a woman. She is as much a human being as anybody else, and at the same time, she is in the possession of Divine Continue Reading...
Medea vs. Jesus: Social Commentaries in Dramatic Fiction and in Gospel Narratives
Both Euripides' ancient Greek tragedy "Medea" and the chronicled gospel "Sermon on the Mount of Jesus" in "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" give the perspectives o Continue Reading...
Mourning Becomes Electra
It must have come as something of a shock for the original audience of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra in 1931 to take their seats, open their programs, and discover that this extremely lengthy trilogy of plays doe Continue Reading...
Women of Ancient Greece: The Plays of Euripides
The plays of Euripides reveal how poorly women were viewed in ancient Greece. From Medea to Sthenoboea to Phaedra, Euripides' women cover a wide range of forms: the vengeful, jilted lover; the plotting Continue Reading...
Athenian Culture
The connection between the development of Athenian culture and the development of Athenian democracy was intimate. Culture and politics flowed together in Athens, as the philosophers (from Socrates to Aristotle), the playwrights (fr Continue Reading...
The tragic hero always elicits sympathy from the audience. According to Struck (2002): "Finally, Oedipus' downfall elicits a great sense of pity from the audience. First, by blinding himself, as opposed to committing suicide, Oedipus achieves a kin Continue Reading...
Aristophanic invective against a rival dramatist: the fragment from the lost Lemnian Women included in Henderson's edition as number 382, attested to in two separate ancient sources (suggesting it was considered a particularly choice joke):
Because Continue Reading...