Euripides Medea Part 1Medea

what’s it about?

Backgroundproduction, playwright, context, myth

A Different Kind of Tragedy?

Agon

tragic sophistic

A Different Kind of Tragedy

Euripides’ Medea

What’s it About?

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What’s it About? (themes, issues) revenge - lover scorned

• family ties twisted love justice (personal)

• vendetta revenge

• betrayal• love lost

outcast• barbarian• self-service• pride

betrayal / unfaithfulness• fear of outsiders

origin, roots (m’s betrayal) broken promises – marriage hubristic jason

• deserves punishment meaning of marriage

• m: = love• j: = social-ladder, secure

BackgroundProduction, Playwright, Context,

Myth

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Playwright, Play Euripides

• 485/4 or 480–ca. 406

• 22 entries

• 4 wins

Production• 431 BCE

• Patriotic themes??– “From of old the children of

Erechtheus are / Splendid” (Chorus, p. 27)

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Medea’s Background

M e d ea(so rce re ss )

A p sy rtus

A e e tes(k in g C o lch is )

C irc e(g o d d e ss -so rce re ss)

H e lio s (S u n) Chariot of the Sun

maps

maps

Play Analysis(pages refer to Dover

ed.)

prologue (pp. 1 ff.)

• Nurse, Tutor, Medea (off stage)

parodos (5 ff.)

• Chorus, Nurse, Medea (off stage)

episode 1 (8 ff.)

• Medea, Creon – entrapment

stasimon 1 (14 f.)

• misogyny, women’s silence reversed

episode 2 (15 ff.)

• AGŌN: Jason, Medea

stasimon 2 (20 f.)

• “may safe marriage, reasonable love be mine”

episode 3 (21 ff.)

• Medea, Aegeus

stasimon 3 (27 f.)• Athens no land for Medea

episode 4 (28 ff.)• Jason, Medea – entrapment

stasimon 4 (31 f.)• murder approaches

episode 5 (32 ff.)• Tutor, Medea’s monologue

anapestic (chanted) interlude (35 f.)• Chorus: sorrows of parenthood

episode 6 (36 ff.)• Medea, Messenger (poisonings

described)stasimon 5 (40 f.)

• desperate hopes (dochmiacs)exodos (41 ff.)

• catastrophe, Medea’s dea ex machina

Euripidean Dramaturgy

A Different Kind of Tragedy?

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Euripidean Dramaturgy Realism Anachronism Intellectualism Experimentalism

• genre-bending Originality Plotting, suspense Framing-closure

• prologue• deus ex machina

Euripides

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A Different Kind of Tragedy? “I was at the place / Where the old draught-

players sit, by the holy fountain, …” (Tutor, p. 3)

“For not on us did Phoebus (= Apollo), lord of music, / Bestow the lyre’s divine / Power, for otherwise I should have sung an answer / To the other sex” (Chorus, 14)

“When love is in excess / It brings a man no honor” (Chorus, 20)

Agōn: Tragic Sophistic

Jason vs. Medea (pp. 15 ff.)

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Character Dynamics … chorus helps us side

with her helps see m’s side j is determined

• blaming the victim

j maybe thinks he’s justified

j feels no guilt at all• covering bases

j ignorant he was feeling

guilty!• damage control

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Sophistic

sophos sophia sophistēs sophistic

• sophism• sophistry

“To make the weaker argument appear the stronger” –

Protagoras

Agon Analysis (pp. 15 ff.) Medea: arguments

1. M. helped-saved J.– at cost

2. J. broke vows.

3. Where to go?– shameful betrayal

Jason: arguments1. Aphrodite saved J.

– though Medea helped

2. M. gained more than gave.– by moving to Greece

3. Prudent match (argument from expediency).– for J., for M., for children

4. Women as trouble. (Tips his hand?)

Medea• “a hypocrite who is too glib

only multiplies the danger that it puts him in”

• “you felt your glory tarnished by an aging, oriental wife”

• J. should have persuaded M. Jason

• “has nothing to do with women”• generous motives