Medea scholarship

Jackson - chorus

through the chorus, Euripides can recap the myth

Hall - barbarism

medea’s barbarism is not important in the text, she is merely a frightening woman

hall - jason and medea’s barbarism

Jason was the most sensitive person to Medea’s ethnicity as he blames her flaws on her barbarism (“you thought, as you grew older, it didn’t look quite right to have a foreign wife”)

Hall - religion

Medea is bound by Greek religion

Hall - semi-divine

medea is not a witch, she is semi-divine and therefore can avoid divine punishment

Hall - Greek imperatives

Medea is the one in the play to uphold Greek values

hall - hypocrisy

Euripides exposes the hypocrisy of the barbarian rhetoric through jason

bongie - religion

the play is about religion

mossman - new things

Medea killing the children and the chariot were all new things invented by Euripides

morwood - the chorus

the chorus is wonderfully alive and responsive

Omitowoju - women

the play represents women in a very misogynistic way with them being the ultimate source of instability in society

Nugent - Athenian nightmare

medea is the Athenian male’s worst nightmare of what may happen with a non-Athenian wife

palmer - jason cannot understand

Jason is unable to understand Medea because he is distinctly human and therefore he can arouse pity, whilst Medea cannot

barlow - subversion

Medea is a play of subversion as Medea follows a masculine heroic tradition