Literature

Medea

Euripides: “lonely mother with two lonely children

• Repetition of “lonely” → emphasises social isolation

• “mother” → highlights her familial identity

• Exile destroys both belonging + identity

• Shows civic banishment creates an irresolvable crisis

Enoch: “people stare at me…”

• “stare” → positions Medea as an outsider

• She is physically within society but culturally excluded

• Shows cultural/spiritual alienation

• Enoch transforms Euripides' physical exile into internal exile

How does Enoch transform Euripides' exile?

Euripides: physically banished OUT
→ Enoch: physically inside, culturally outside
→ physical/civic exile becomes psychological/cultural exile

double exile

How does Foley connect to exile?“important critical response to Greek drama from a variety of perspectives”

• Modern adaptations provide “different perspectives”

• Enoch gives Medea's exile an Indigenous perspective

• Shows how adaptation can reconfigure the meaning of displacement

Euripides: “we women are the sorriest lot”

• we women” → collective female experience

• “sorriest” → emphasises systemic disadvantage

• Marriage is presented as transactional

• Women lack agency

• Patriarchal society gives Medea no legitimate path to justice

Enoch: “He has never known his land”

• “land” → Indigenous cultural/spiritual connection

• Shows loss of ancestral identity

• Medea recognises her own role in assimilation

• Oppression has become internalised

• Enoch transforms patriarchal oppression into colonial/cultural oppression

What's the big contrast?

Euripides: oppression happens TO Medea through patriarchal structures
→ Enoch: oppression has become WITHIN Medea through assimilation
→ both lead to resistance

Foley: social “resistance to the domestication and disempowerment of frightening, articulate heroines like Clytemnestra and Medea”.

• Medea is not allowed to remain a passive victim

• Foley discusses resisting the “domestication and disempowerment” of Medea

• Supports Medea's eventual assertion of sovereignty

Euripides: “alien land”

• “alien” → constructs Medea's homeland as foreign/inferior

• Jason positions Greek culture as superior

• His rhetoric undermines Medea's cultural identity

• Cultural difference becomes a justification for erasure

Enoch: “dances and songs my granny taught me

• “granny” → intergenerational cultural inheritance

• “dances and songs” → Indigenous spiritual/cultural knowledge

• Contrasts Jason's idea of civilisation

• Enoch revalues Indigenous identity

• Culture becomes a source of sovereignty

“dowry” / “bought”

• “dowry” → traditionally associated with marriage/transaction

• “bought” → commodification

• Medea's sacred cultural inheritance has been turned into something she must exchange

• Shows the damaging influence of Jason's/capitalist society

• Cultural identity is both valuable and exploited

contrast in erasure of culture

While Euripides presents dominant Greek culture as superior, leading to the erasure of Medea’s cultural identity, Enoch reverses this hierarchy by revaluing Indigenous culture as a source of identity, inheritance, and sovereignty.

How does Foley connect?"profound ignorance of the music, dance, and theatrical context"

• Adaptations provide perspectives “not always available in the academy”

• Enoch brings an Indigenous perspective to Medea

• Reinterprets the classical story through a different cultural framework