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Copyright of Clotho is the property of University of Ljubljana, Faculty of the Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the use of contemporary music as a vehicle for helping students engage more meaningfully with ancient texts, particularly dramatic texts. Particularly, contemporary music can help students engage in meaningful conversations around the difficult topics that the figure of Medea raises, moving them beyond a simple focus on her status as a child-killer. Ultimately, this article argues for the value of Classics in encouraging thoughtful dialogue around sensitive issues in the modern day, possibly helping students think about their own world in more nuanced and complicated ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The definition of heroism is contested within the psychological literature, with some suggesting that a formal definition is unfeasible. Following these suggestions, to help clarify what is understood by “heroism,” I critique three potential understandings of heroism drawn from recent psychological work on heroism. In the first critique, I discuss the notion of heroes as displaying certain characters traits, or strengths. In the second, I argue that heroic action cannot be defined by its consequences. In the final critique, I explore whether heroism can be evaluated by the authority an actor supports or opposes. These critiques use Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea as their examples to show that these three understandings cannot express what is heroic about Antigone and not heroic about Medea. I suggest that, instead, the designation “hero” should be understood as an ethical evaluation of the person so designated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The short, moving song heard from Gretchen at the spinning wheel connects her fate to a series of epic women, The tragic stories of Medea, Ariadne and finally Mary provide illuminating contexts for what Gretchen tells in Faust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her latest book of poetry, Belgian-born Spanish writer Chantal Maillard offers an interpretation of the Greek myth of Medea that deconstructs guilt by merging its individual, exceptional dimension into the common, universal one. The book appears therefore as an extension aiming to explore the very areas of the myth that have remained untold, at the crossroads with Maillard's own poetics and cognisance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mythic character of Medea is an atypical figure, embodying two conflicting narrative roles. As a priestess, she provides Jason with magical aid in his quest for the Golden Fleece, conforming to the archetype of the mentor, or magical helper. However, as princess of Colchis, she becomes Jason's love interest and wife. These two character moulds indicate Medea's role as a character that is wholly dependent upon the male protagonist, but this is resisted. Medea displays that she is in constant conflict with her identity within her story arc. Several versions of the Medea myth depict a series of attempted departures from her structural role, showing Medea as displaying individual autonomy even as she seeks to achieve acceptance within a community. Her selfhood fluctuates, composed through violence and sacrifice, as she transitions from a spiritual identity to a mortal one and back again. This chapter discusses the structural role of Medea as a narrative archetype and her attempts to subvert and reposition herself outside the confines of traditional and teleological narratives. This will entail a reading of Euripides' Medea, extending to Ovid's account of her in his Metamorphoses, and to a modern retelling of the myth in Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Medea. Each of these versions highlights the tools of ritual and sacrifice that Medea uses to achieve her transformations and by which she is vilified. Ultimately, this chapter addresses how Medea's liminality and transgressive acts reveal the desire for self-formation and the limitations of that desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, it is carried out a study of the character of the mother in the plays of Euripides, one of the most important tragedians of the classical culture. It is seen, from the prosophographic and etopeica characteristics of Hecuba, Medea, Andromache and Etra, constant and most significant changes for defining how he designed the character of the mother and his mark on the edeotetico development of the works analyzed: Las troyanas, Hécuba, Andrómaca, Las suplicantes y Medea. The content analysis of each word is used as a method to elucidate the personological aspects that distinguish the selected characters. This work contributes to develop studies about philology and classical tradition, as part of the scientific research project on the theme that runs the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ágora: Estudos Clássicos em Debate is the property of Agora: Estudos Classicos em Debate and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Playing upon a mythological tradition rich in terrible, ruthless, and powerful females--many of whom were actually bestial--Euripides chose perhaps the most horrible of all, at least to fathers, the teknophonos (the child-killing mother), as the central character of his play Medea. Medea has been considered, in Euripides's portrayal as well as more generally, an archetype of the Terrible Mother. Whatever the relationship between the psychoanalytical category of the Terrible Mother and the several female monsters of Greek mythology, an appreciation of the motif as a source of male anxiety, to say the least, provides a framework of analysis for one of the central ideas of Medea: the capacity of women for ferocious and violent acts, including becoming a teknophonos. Medea illustrated this capacity for transformation in a peculiarly rich and complex way. No Grendel's Dam, she had semidivine status, became a devoted wife and mother, and lived as a human, notwithstanding her violent acts on behalf of Jason, her eventual husband. Under provocation, she resumed her divine powers, expressing them with horrific effect and to her great joy. With great reluctance and regret, she achieved her apotheosis by the sacrificing of her beloved sons to herself. Thus, the granddaughter of Helios became the Goddess of the Lost Synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Medea complex refers to a disturbed mother-child relationship with obvious destructive aspects, and it evokes a central theme that Jung articulated in his writing about the Terrible Mother. The best-known story of Medea is based on the mythical figure portrayed in Euripides's fifth-century BCE play. The complex, as well as this story, includes elements of betrayal, abandonment, stealing, and vengeance directed at helpless children. Two case examples discuss how the Medea complex appears, first in a parent and second in a son. Maternal and paternal roles in the complex are considered as well as the symbolic implications of killing children. The complex is also examined through interrelated literary and historical depictions of the dangerous feminine as foreign queen from Apollonius, Virgil, and Shakespeare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myths have remained popular in every field of art since ancient times till today. Lilith, who is mentioned as the first wife of Adam in Sumerian mythology, revolts against patriarchal structure, but is labelled as child killer in following generations and thus punished by patriarchal culture. Frequently encountered in literary works, Lilith is regarded as the first woman who started the war between woman and men by the feminists. Lamia and Medea, the two mythological figures who share the some destiny with Lilith have also been accused of child killing and punished by the patriarchal society because of their revolt against patriarchal structure. It is examined in this study how the norms as imposed to women by the patriarchal structure and those who challenge these norms are shaped and how these are reflected onto myths. The traces of the revolt by Lilith, who is considered to be first women to start the gender conflict between men and women, are followed in the study of this myth. In addition, the figures of Lamia and Medea in Greek myths are mentioned as they are found in the myths and their truthfulness is explored. It is detected in the study that the position of women has not changed in much myths as in real life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ricoeur Studies / Etudes Ricoeuriennes is the property of University of Pittsburgh, University Library System and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Synergies Monde Méditerranéen is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article places renewed emphasis on the gender and racial dynamics in José Triana's Medea en el espejo (Medea in the Mirror; Havana, 1960) by examining its relationship to Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Medea, a major source of inspiration for the Cuban dramatist that has been overlooked in contemporary scholarship. It demonstrates that Triana appropriates the image of Medea as a vengeful witch from the Roman text and accordingly constructs a heroine oscillating between antithetical subject positions: man and woman, master and slave, self and other. Situating the play in its sociopolitical context, the article argues that the indeterminacy of Triana's heroine, a mulata named María, for artistic and cultural reasons, is symptomatic of Cuba's liminal position and the collapse of hierarchical distinctions with the advent of the revolution in 1959, a temporal border that marked the beginning of a new era and caused the blurring of social boundaries. Triana, I conclude, revisits the myth of Medea and uses it as a vehicle for raising questions about the abuse of power and the continuous suppression of black agency under Castro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greek tragedy is considered to have served as a way for men to explore the feminine. But women in Euripides' tragedies are more than mere representations of what the consequences of the trespassing of the cultural determined limits of womanhood may be. Alcestis', Medea's and Phaedra's cases show that a woman's identity can only be defined through her husband. All tentative to solve the tensions within the role of a wife and a mother are bound to fail, as this cannot be done outside the cultural assigned model of what a woman is. Once this model is challenged, the woman is subject to a deconstructive process, turning into a depraved and murderer figure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Literator is the property of African Online Scientific Information System PTY LTD and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

If, as I propose, Hecuba represents fate and Medea contingency, taken together they constitute as well as reveal the tragic within the tension between the ontological and empirical status of man as it is embodied in the clash between necessity and freedom. Viewing this tension within the perspective of the unconditional status of the love of the mother, I will show how both narratives belong to the realm of possibilities and cause, what Ricoeur calls ‘suffering for the sake of understanding’. I will argue that the phenomenon of the unconditional love of the mother is in itself tragic and open to both the appearance of both Medea and Hecuba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a 'preview' of Fiona Templeton's work in progress, The Medead. It arises from my 'access' to her process and explores certain aspects of that work, but primarily sets out to explore the piece as a performative deconstruction of the myth of Medea, as articulated and disseminated through the play by Euripides. I examine the manner in which the piece foregrounds the operation of intertextuality to disrupt normative notions of time and space, and works on the boundaries between the linguistic and the material, so as to stage the ways in which stories can shape bodies and construct 'realities'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]