Comparing Medea And Seneca 's Medea

Both Fifth century B.C. playwright Euripides and Roman poet and dramatist Ovid tell the story of Jason ditching Medea for another woman; however, they do not always share a perspective on the female matron's traits, behavior, and purpose. Euripides portrays a woman who reacts to injustice by beginning a crusade to avenge all who harmed her which she is prepared to see through even if it means resorting to the most contemptible methods. Ovid, on the other hand, tells of a much less extreme figure whose humble goal is only to persuade Jason to return. Despite these differences, both Medeas create trouble by acting with emotions instead of with reason, and as a result, put

Seneca’s portrayal of Medea is exceptionally different. Medea’s story up to the present time is told from her own mouth, not that of the Nurse. The play opens with Medea praying to the gods to “give [her] control” (45) so that she may carry out her vengeance. Her rage and fury are present from the start. She tells herself to “bare your rage for fighting, and prepare yourself to kill, work to a frenzy” (46). She admits that she hopes “men will…pair [her] divorce with [her] wedding in well-matched rivalry” (46). Seneca’s Medea is more in control than Euripides’ Medea. Euripides’ Medea is very

Medea’s strength is portrayed as her madness as she takes control and decides the fate of her enemies. She is a strong character and Euripides allows Medea to have a voice by allowing the audience to witness her break from the norm of what a woman of her time is expected to do. After giving up her family and former life to be with her husband, Jason, he decides to marry a younger princess while still married to Medea. Medea realizes that women are left to face the most miserable situations and says, “We women are the most unfortunate creatures” (229). Jason feels that Medea is to be grateful for what he is doing by marrying into royalty as it will afford all of them a better life. The representation of Medea by Euripides is powerful, manipulative, and extremely smart, yet because she is a woman she has limited social power.

Superficially, Medea is a critique of relations between men and women, the struggle between Jason and Medea; then the struggle between Creon and Medea. However at the deeper level, Medea is a critique of the quality and state of the contemporary culture of Euripides (Arrowsmith 361). The unique symbolism is that

Revenge is the predominant motivator for the psychological and corporeal action of the play. In the play, Medea is self absorbed into her misery, her determination of inflicting pain and suffering to Jason consumes her entire rationality and revenge is her only focus point in the play. She effectively draws the Chorus in, “to work revenge on Jason for his wrongs to

Euripides’ Medea is a tragic play that takes place in Corinth, Greece. It was first produced in 431 BC. It was during this time that Corinth and Athens were rivals, fighting to have the upper hand. In fact, Corinth and Sparta teamed together against Athens during the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. Like most literature, Euripides’ Medea incorporates the period in which it was written along with a timeless theme. Euripdes uses the literary devices of setting, irony, and symbolism to depict the theme of identity in relation to marriage.

Retribution is a monster of appetite, eternally bloodthirsty and never filled. Rage, resentment and envy does not change the heart of others. A massive success is the best revenge for a woman. It is the only way to get back at someone for a pain they have caused. In Euripides’ Medea and Ovid’s’ Metamorphoses, Medea and Juno exhibit vengeance to defend their dignity.

Euripides created a two-headed character in this classical tragedy. Medea begins her marriage as the ideal loving wife who sacrificed much for her husband's safety. At the peak of the reading, she becomes a murderous villain that demands respect and even some sympathy. By the end, the husband and wife are left devoid of love and purpose as the tragedy closes.

Commonly considered one of Euripides greatest pieces, Medea is an insightful depiction of how a woman’s love for her husband, churns into a gruesome revenge scheme against him. This tragedy illustrates a tale of a woman who challenges Greek societal norms. In the era that the story takes place; women are often seen in submissive roles. However, the play’s main character, Medea, challenges their customs through her actions against the Kingdom of Corinth and Jason.

Medea is the tragic story of a woman desperate for revenge upon her husband, after he betrayed her for another woman’s bed. It was written by Euripides, a Greek playwright, in 431 B.C. Throughout the play each character shows us their inconsistent and contradicting personalities, in particular, Jason and Medea. The play opens with the Nurse expressing her anxiety about Jason betraying and leaving Medea for another, wealthier, woman. Our initial reaction is to feel empathetic towards Medea, who has been abandoned so conveniently. But towards the end of the play, when Medea takes revenge on

Throughout the play we see a rising culmination of emotions of anger and hate to the point where there is an anticlimactic resolution when Medea gets revenge on Jason. If Aristotle were to comment on this so-called tragedy that Euripedes wrote, he would mention that this play does not contain the complexity and quality that a tragedy most definitely needs. According to Aristotle, the most important part of a tragedy is its plot or as Aristotle puts it, “the imitation of an action” or mimesis. Aristotle also states that in making a tragedy, three things must lead one after the other in a successive way; reversal of intention (peripetiea), recognition (anagnorisis) and the cleansing of pity and fear (catharsis). Euripedes fails to make Medea a tragedy as he does not include these main elements such as hermatia, peripeteia, anagnorisis and catharsis that Aristotle says make a tragedy successful. Euripedes ultimately fails to make a very complex play.

Medea by Euripides, written in the B.C’s mirrors the conditions and problematic circumstances of Greek women and how one brave lady, Medea broke through this ongoing custom and narrates her story from the beginning to the revealing end, whereby through the course of the drama we get a justification of why she does such psychopathic deeds during the course of the play. This essay I am writing echoes how effectively Euripides advocates the beginning with a well planned ending, with the help of a successful running plot and adequately placed subtle hints from minor characters such as the nurse and tone of Medea’s monologue. Also in the beginning we are introduced with a justification of Medea’s

These lines, even out of context, represent pity for Medea, as well as fear on her behalf. When the audience feels these emotions as a result of the action, they are experiencing the cathartic response to which Aristotle gave mention.

The Chorus delivers these final lines of Euripides’s Medea, “…the end men look for cometh not, / And a path is there where no man thought; so hath it fallen here.” (Euripides, 80) This quotation not only signifies the events, which have transpired in the plot of Medea, it also shows the recognition of a very curious aspect of Medea: that the protagonist of the play, Medea, is not the tragic hero. A tragic hero by Aristotelian standards is one who possesses a driving aspect– or hamartia – which causes his or her downfall, who endures a reversal of fortunes leading to immense suffering – called peripeteia, and who undergoes an anagnorisis: a profound change or realization. Medea does not have any of these attributes. Instead, it is

To conclude, Medea’s actions can be seen an act of desperation from her side, as she realises that her functional life in Greece is practically over: she is a woman with no man, therefore no rights. Although through her barbaric background and natural cunningness, she forges a plan to escape this miserable prospect of her life, her actions, as terrible and inhumane as they are, empower her to free herself from her discriminating