Medea
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In Greek mythology, Medea was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of Corinth, offers him his daughter, Glauce. The play tells about how Medea avenges her husband's betrayal.
The myths involving Jason have been interpreted by specialists as part of a class of myths that tell how the Hellenes of the distant heroic age, before the Trojan War, faced the challenges of the pre-Greek "Pelasgian" cultures of mainland Greece, the Aegean and Anatolia. Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and above all Heracles, are all "liminal" figures, poised on the threshold between the old world of shamans, chthonic earth deities, and the new Bronze Age Greek ways.
Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a myth known best from a late literary version worked up by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC and called the Argonautica. However, for all its self-consciousness and researched archaic vocabulary, the late epic was based on very old, scattered materials. Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as being a priestess of the goddess Hecate or a witch. The myth of Jason and Medea is very old, originally written around the time Hesiod wrote the Theogony. It was known to the composer of the Little Iliad, part of the Epic Cycle.
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Medea in popular culture
The dramatic episodes in which Medea plays a role have ensured that she remains vividly represented in popular culture.
Primary sources
Cicero In the court case Pro Caelio, the name Medea is referenced at least five times, as a way to make fun of Clodia, sister of P. Clodius Pulcher, the man who exiled Cicero.
- Heroides XII
- Metamorphoses VII, 1-450
- Tristia iii.9
- Euripides, Medea
- Hyginus, Fabulae 21-26
- Pindar, Pythian Odes, IIII
- Seneca: Medea (tragedy)
- Apollodorus, Bibliotheke I, 23-28
- Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica
- Gaius Valerius Flaccus Argonautica (epic)
- Herodotus, Histories VII.62i
- Hesiod, Theogony 1000-2
Translations
- G.Theodoridis. Full Text. Prose: [1]
Secondary material
- Jean Anouilh, Medea
- John Gardner (novelist), Jason and Medeia
- Robinson Jeffers, Medea
- Hans Henny Jahnn, Medea
- Percival Everett, For Her Dark Skin
- Maxwell Anderson, The Wingless Victory
- Geoffrey Chaucer The Legend of Good Women (1386)
- Michael Wood, In Search of Myths & Heroes: Jason and the Golden Fleece
- Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou (Bost), Medea (parody of Medea of Euripides)
- Rick Riordan, Sea of Monsters, the second Percy Jackson & the Olympians novel- She is mentioned as making a very strong SPF 50,000 sunscreen that was helpful in fighting the Colchis Bulls.
Related Literature
- Medea (Ovid's lost tragedy - two lines are extant)
- Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats
- A. R. Gurney, The Golden Fleece
- Pierre Corneille Médée (tragedy, 1635)
- Heiner Muller, Medeamaterial and Medeaplay
- William Morris Life and Death of Jason (epic poem, 1867)
- Franz Grillparzer, Das goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece) (play, 1822)
- Pervical Everett, For Her Dark Skin (novel, 1990)
- Christa Wolf, Medea (a novel) (published in German 1993, translated to English 1998)
- Cherríe Moraga, The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (combines classical Greek myth Medea with Mexicana/o legend of La Llorona and Aztec myth of lunar deity Coyolxauhqui)
- The Medea of the modern times
- Cicero, Pro Caelio (political speech) Cicero refers to Clodia as hanc Palatinam Medeam, "this Medea of the Palatine"
- Stuart Hill, Blade Of Fire (Character portrayed as based on Medea in this Young adult novel)
Cinema and television
- In the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, Medea was portrayed by Nancy Kovack.
- In the 2000 Hallmark presentation Jason and the Argonauts, Medea was portrayed by Jolene Blalock.
- In 1970, the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini directed a film adaptation of Medea featuring the opera singer Maria Callas in the title role.
- In 1978, the film A Dream of Passion in which Melina Mercouri as an actress portraying Medea seeks out Ellen Burstyn a mother who recently murdered her children.
- In 1987, director Lars von Trier filmed his pre-Dogma 95 Medea for Danish television, using a preexisting script by film maker Carl Theodor Dreyer. Cast included Udo Kier, Kirsten Olesen, Henning Jensen, Mette Munk Plum.
- Medea (under the name Caster) is the one of the antagonists in the visual novel and anime Fate/Stay Night.
- In 2007, director Tonino De Bernardi filmed a modern version of the myth, set in Paris and starring Isabelle Huppert as Medea, called Médée Miracle. The character of Medea lives in Paris with Jason, who leaves her.
See also
