Medea (Euripides)

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Data
Title: Medea
Genus: play
Original language: Ancient Greek
Author: Euripides
Publishing year: 431 BC Chr.
Premiere: 431 BC Chr.
Place of premiere: Athens
Place and time of the action: Greece, 2nd millennium BC Chr.
people
  • Nurse Medeas
  • Educator of children
  • Medea
  • Choir of Women (Corinthians)
  • Creon , King of Corinth
  • Jason
  • Aigeus , King of Athens
  • delivery boy
  • Children of Medea
Deus ex machina in a production of the Medea des Euripides ( Syracuse , 2009)

Medea ( Greek  Μήδεια ) is a 431 BC Chr. Composed tragedy of the Greek poet Euripides . The piece is based on the saga of the Argonauts in Greek myth . The king's daughter Medea is cast out by her husband Jason , for whom she had abandoned and betrayed her own family, and avenges herself cruelly, killing her own children as well.

action

With the help of the king's daughter Medea, Jason stole the miraculous golden fleece from the property of the king of Colchis , Medea's father, and fled with her to Corinth . King Creon granted them asylum there.

By the time the action starts, Jason has already turned away from Medea and has entered into a relationship with Glauke , Creon's daughter. Medea is deeply injured and plans to revenge. King Creon brings Medea his decision to banish her from his land. With her threats of revenge and magic she poses a security risk for him. Medea obtains a day's respite. Against better judgment, Kreon granted her the deadline. In a big argument, she accuses Jason of leaving home for him and risking everything, while he now betrays her and breaks his oaths. A return to Colchis is impossible for her, as she murdered her brother and made the robbery of the Golden Fleece possible. Outwardly, Jason argues rationally, pragmatically and in accordance with the conventions of the time: the connection with the king's daughter would also benefit her and their sons, since otherwise they always remain outsiders as “strangers”. His argumentation is not only rejected by Medea, but also by the choir as a mere pretext.

Medea then deceives Jason by pretending to want to send reconciling gifts to the king's daughter so that at least the children would be spared from exile. Jason responds to their wishes and accompanies the children. He persuades Glauke to accept the presents - a dress and a gold wreath. The poison with which Medea soaked the dress kills the king's daughter as well as Creon, who tries to come to her aid. Medea murders her sons in order to withdraw them from the revenge of the Corinthians and to punish Jason by the death of his descendants. She escapes on a dragon cart sent to her by the sun god Helios , her grandfather.

reception

Euripides is considered the master of the psychological among the ancient playwrights. The fate of his characters is less shaped by divine coincidences than much more by their own passions, contradictions, interpersonal misunderstandings and complex relationship problems. This leads to a new quality of figure representation in Euripides, who is therefore also considered the most modern of the three Greek tragedians. But the image of a woman driven by a thirst for revenge and hatred disturbed his contemporaries.

In addition, Euripides completely de-heroized the Argonaut myth, which has been known since Homer's time, and traced the conflict between Medea and Jason down to deeply human motives. That Medea kills her children in order to get revenge on Jason is an invention of Euripides. In older versions, the boys were slain by the Corinthians out of hatred of the barbarians or out of revenge for the murder of Creon. The spectacular finish in Helios' sun chariot is also an ingredient of the poet. The myth tells the scheming goings-on of a poisoner, Euripides creates the tragic story of the destruction of a family and the transition from unconditional love to furious destructiveness. At the same time, however, Euripides anchors her way of acting in comprehensible, realistic motifs: in a world determined by men, she is “the stranger” in every respect, and even between her feeling-dominated view and Jason's rational argumentation there are gaping worlds that cannot be reconciled.

In the annual agon , in which the best dramas were awarded, Euripides received no prize for Medea . Today the piece is part of the standard theater repertoire and one of the most frequently performed pieces of antiquity.

Other drama versions of the Medea material (selection)

Settings

filming

See also

Commons : Medea  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Text output

  • Euripidis fabulae. Edidit James Diggle. Vol. 1. Oxford 1984 (Oxford Classical Texts). ISBN 0-19-814594-2 (authoritative).
  • Euripides, Medea. Edidit Herman van Looy. BG Teubner, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1992.
  • Donald J. Mastronarde : (Ed.): Euripides, Medea . Cambridge 2002 (authoritative commentary)

Translations

Non-fiction

  • Albrecht Dihle : Euripides' "Medea". Presented on November 20, 1976. Winter, Heidelberg 1977, ISBN 3-533-02646-9 .
  • Roxana Hidalgo-Xirinach: The Medea of ​​Euripides. On the psychoanalysis of female aggression and autonomy. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2002, ISBN 3-89806-101-9 .
  • Georg Otten: The Medea of ​​Euripides. A comment on the German translation. Frank & Timme, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86596-010-3 .
  • Pietro Pucci: The Violence of Pity in Euripides' Medea. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1980, ISBN 0-8014-1190-4 .

Essays

  • Bruno Snell: Aristophanes and the aesthetics. In: The Discovery of the Mind. 3. Edition. Claasen, Hamburg 1955, pp. 161-183, especially p. 172 ff.
  • Werner Dresken: Interpretation of the great Medea speech. In: Eur. Med. Münster, pp. 1021-1080.
  • Kurt von Fritz: The development of the Iason-Medea saga and the "Medea" of Euripides. In Ders .: Ancient and Modern Tragedy. De Gruyter, Berlin 1962, pp. 322-429.
  • Ulrich Hübner: On the fifth episode of the “Medea” by Euripides. In: Hermes . 112: 401-418 (1984).
  • Ulrich Hübner: Further interpolations in the Medea of ​​Euripides. In: Philologus . 128: 21-40 (1984).
  • Rainer Klimek-Winter: ΔEINH ΓAP - Medea at Euripides. In: The ancient language teaching. Vol. 40 (1997), H. 4-5, pp. 35-49.
  • Bernd Manuwald : The murder of the children. Comments on the “Medea” tragedies of Euripides and Neophron. In: Vienna Studies. New episode. 17: 27-61 (1983).
  • Bernhard Meissner: Euripides Medea 1236-1250. In: Hermes. 96 (1968), pp. 155-166.
  • Gerhard Müller: Interpolations in the Medea of ​​Euripides. In: Studi italiani di filologia classica. Florence 1951, pp. 65-82.
  • Otto rainbow: marginal notes on Medea des Euripides. In: Eranos 48 (1950), pp. 21-56.
  • Eilhard Schlesinger: Euripides' "Medea". In: Hermes 94 (1966), pp. 26-53.
  • Jens-Uwe Schmidt: Medea and Achill. Euripides and the male-heroic norms of action. In: Thilo Holzmüller, Karl-Norbert Ihmig (Ed.): Approaches to Reality. Theology and philosophy in dialogue; Festschrift for Hermann Braun. Luther, Bielefeld 1997, ISBN 3-7858-0384-2 .
  • Jens-Uwe Schmidt: The child murder of the foreign Kolcher - a tragic conflict? In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. 142: 243-272 (1999).
  • Hanns-Dieter Voigtländer: Later revisions in the great Medea monologue. In: Philologos 101 (1957), pp. 217-237.
  • Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff : Excurse to Euripides Medeia. In: Hermes 15 (1880), pp. 481-523.
  • Otto Zwierlein : The tragedy of the "Medea" dramas. In: LJb./ New Series 19 (1978), pp. 27-63.
  • Paul Dräger : Euripides and Neophron: Child Murder. Aigeus scene. The myth. In: Euripides Medea. Translated and edited by Paul Dräger. Stuttgart Reclam 2011, pp. 98-110.

Individual evidence

  1. Elisabeth Frenzel : Substances of world literature. A lexicon of longitudinal sections of the history of poetry (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 300). 9th, revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-30009-5 , p. 510.
  2. Brauneck, Manfred: The theater of antiquity. Hellas In: The world as a stage , Stuttgart 1993, pp. 132-133
  3. Archived copy ( memento of the original from July 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.operone.de