Greek Tragedy, Euripides and Medea Week 15 Alice Y. Chang

The fifth century BCE and intellectual revolution  Most of these plays date from the last half of the fifth century B.C.; they were written in and for an Athens that, since the days of Aeschylus, had undergone an intellectual revolution.  It was in a time of critical reevaluation of accepted standards and traditions that Sophocles produced his masterpiece, Oedipus the King, and the problems of the time are reflected in the play.

Alice Y. Chang Mysterious + contemporary  The use of the familiar myth enabled the dramatist to draw on all its wealth of unformulated meaning, but it did not prevent him from striking a contemporary note.  Oedipus, in Sophocles’ play, is at one and the same time the mysterious figure of the past who broke the most fundamental human taboos and a typical fifth-century Athenian.  His character contains all the virtues for which the Athenians were famous and the vices for which they were notorious.

Alice Y. Chang Pericles and Oedipus  The Athenian devotion to the city, which received the main emphasis in Pericles’ praise of Athens, is strong in Oedipus; his answer to the priest at the beginning of the play shows that he is a conscientious and patriotic ruler.

Alice Y. Chang EURIPIDES B.C.

Euripides  「 舞台上的哲學家」的美稱  悲劇內容大多以家庭生活為題材，討論戰爭、民主、 貧富、宗教、婦女地位 … 等問題  討論雅典奴隸民主制衰弱時期的社會思想  寫實  現存十八部作品，是傳世作品最多的古希臘悲劇家 Alice Y. Chang

The Works of Euripides  Alcestis Written 438 B.C.E Andromache Written B.C.E The Bacchantes Written 410 B.C.E Alcestis Andromache The Bacchantes  Hecuba Written 424 B.C.E Helen Written 412 B.C.E Translated by E. P. Coleridge The Heracleidae Written ca. 429 B.C.E Translated by E. P. Coleridge Hecuba Helen The Heracleidae Alice Y. Chang

Works of Euripides  Iphigenia At Aulis Written 410 B.C.E Iphigenia in Tauris Written B.C.E Translated by Robert Potter Medea Written 431 B.C.E Translated by E. P. Coleridge Iphigenia At Aulis Iphigenia in Tauris Medea  Rhesus Written 450 B.C.E The Suppliants Written 422 B.C.E Translated by E. P. Coleridge The Trojan Women Written 415 B.C.E Rhesus The Suppliants The Trojan Women Alice Y. Chang

Medea  an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC.  The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman. Alice Y. Chang

Jason bringing Pelias the Golden Fleece Alice Y. Chang

Medea  Euripides’ Medea, produced in 431 B.C., the year that brought the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, appeared earlier than Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, but it has a bitterness that is more in keeping with the spirit of a later age.

Alice Y. Chang

Prologue of Medea  NURSE  Oh how I wish that ship the Argo had never sailed off to the land of Colchis, past the Symplegades, those dark dancing rocks which smash boats sailing through the Hellespont. I wish they'd never chopped the pine trees down in those mountain forests up on Pelion, to make oars for the hands of those great men who set off, on Pelias' orders, to fetch the golden fleece. Alice Y. Chang

Nurse  Then my mistress, Medea, never would've sailed away to the towers in the land of Iolcus, her heart passionately in love with Jason. She'd never have convinced those women, Pelias' daughters, to kill their father. She'd not have come to live in Corinth here, with her husband and her children—well loved in exile by those whose land she'd moved to. She gave all sorts of help to Jason. Alice Y. Chang

Jason and Medea fled to Corinth.  When Jason and Medea returned to Iolcus, Pelias still refused to give up his throne. Medea conspired to have Pelias' own daughters kill him.  She told them she could turn an old ram into a young ram by cutting up the old ram and boiling it (alternatively, she did this with Aeson, Jason's father).  During the demonstration, a live, young ram jumped out of the pot. Excited, the girls cut their father into pieces and threw him into a pot.  Having killed Pelias, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth. Alice Y. Chang

米蒂亞 Medea  米蒂亞是科奇斯島國的公主，也是女祭師，一生命運 乖舛，她愛上來自外地為了取得金羊毛與她父親作對 的傑遜王子，不過，這段姻緣最後卻以悲劇收場。  米蒂亞是月亮女神的乾女兒，所以她懂得使用許多的 黑魔法，她會調製靈藥、占卜、下毒。  不但法術高強也非常聰明與殘忍，他曾為了傑遜，親 手殺了他自己的弟弟。後因為傑遜移情別戀，與鄰國 的公主結婚，被情人拋棄的米蒂亞一怒之下，製作了 一件沾滿毒藥的禮服，送給傑遜的未婚妻，將其殺害 。甚至還親手殺了自己為傑遜生下的兩名稚子，最後 騎著馬離開傷心地。 Alice Y. Chang

golden coronet, covered in poison  In Corinth, Jason abandoned Medea for the king's daughter, Glauce.  Medea took her revenge by sending Glauce a dress and golden coronet, covered in poison.  This resulted in the deaths of both the princess and the king, Creon, when he went to save her. Alice Y. Chang

Luigi Cherubini: Medea Cherubini- Medea/dp/B001JFKW8A/ref=sr _1_6?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-6 Alice Y. Chang

The golden chariot  According to the tragic poet Euripides, Medea continued her revenge, murdering her two children by Jason. Afterward, she left Corinth and flew to Athens in a golden chariot driven by dragons sent by her grandfather Helios, god of the sun. Alice Y. Chang

Medea (about to murder her children) by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix (1862). Alice Y. Chang

Ironic expression  If Oedipus is, in one sense, a warning to a generation that has embarked on an intellectual revolution, Medea is the ironic expression of the disillusion that comes after the shipwreck.  In this play we are conscious for the first time of an attitude characteristic of modern literature, the artist’s feeling of separation from the audience, the isolation of the poet.

Alice Y. Chang rejected by his contemporaries  The common background of audience and poet is disappearing, the old certainties are being undermined, the city divided.  Euripides is the first Greek poet to suffer the fate of so many of the great modern writers: rejected by most of his contemporaries (he rarely won first prize and was the favorite target for the scurrilous humor of the comic poets), he was universally admired and revered by the Greeks of the centuries that followed his death.

Alice Y. Chang Private and intellectual life  It is significant that what little biographical information we have for Euripides makes no mention of military service or political office; unlike Aeschylus, who fought in the ranks at Marathon, and Sophocles, who took an active part in public affairs from youth to advanced old age, Euripides seems to have lived a private, an intellectual life.

Alice Y. Chang Questioning the received ideas  Younger than Sophocles ( though they died in the same year), he was more receptive to the critical theories and the rhetorical techniques offered by the Sophist teachers;  his plays often subject received ideas to fundamental questioning, expressed in vivid dramatic debate.

Euripides’ Medea  His Medea is typical of his iconoclastic approach; his choice of subject and central characters is in itself a challenge to established canons.  He still dramatizes myth, but the myth he chooses is exotic and disturbing, and the protagonist is not a man but a woman. Alice Y. Chang

The citizen rights?  Medea is both woman and foreigner—that is, in terms of the audience’s prejudice and practice she is a representative of the two free-born groups in Athenian society that had almost no rights at all (though the male foreign resident had more rights than the native woman).

Alice Y. Chang Anti-social  The tragic hero is no longer a king, “one who is highly renowned and prosperous such as Oedipus,” but a woman who, because she finds no redress for her wrongs in society, is driven by her passion to violate that society’s most sacred laws in a rebellion against its typical representative, Jason, her husband.

Alice Y. Chang Earth and Sun Earth and Sun  All through Medea the human beings involved call on the gods; two especially are singled out for attention: Earth and Sun.  It is by these two gods that Medea makes Aegeus swear to give her refuge in Athens, the chorus invokes them to prevent Medea’s violence against her sons, and Jason wonders how Medea can look on Earth and Sun after she has killed her own children.

Alice Y. Chang The Magic Chariot  These emphatic appeals clearly raise the question of the attitude of the gods, and the answer to the question is a shock.  We are not told what Earth does, but Sun sends the magic chariot on which Medea makes her escape.

rejected by most of his contemporaries rejected by most of his contemporaries scurrilous humor  Euripides is the first Greek poet to suffer the fate of so many of the great modern writers: rejected by most of his contemporaries (he rarely won first prize and was the favorite target for the scurrilous humor of the comic poets), he was universally admired and revered by the Greeks of the centuries that followed his death. Alice Y. Chang

Iconoclastic his iconoclastic approach  His Medea is typical of his iconoclastic approach; his choice of subject and central characters is in itself a challenge to established canons.  He still dramatizes myth, but the myth he chooses is exotic and disturbing, and the protagonist is not a man but a woman. both woman and foreigner  Medea is both woman and foreigner, that is, in terms of the audience’s prejudice and practice she is a representative of the two free-born groups in Athenian society that had almost no rights at all (though the male foreign resident had more rights than the native woman). Alice Y. Chang

great intellectual power great intellectual power  She is not just a woman and a foreigner, she is also a person of great intellectual power. she moves them like pawns to their proper places in her barbaric game  Compared with her the credulous king and her complacent husband are children, and once her mind is made up, she moves them like pawns to their proper places in her barbaric game.  The myth is used for new purposes, to shock the members of the audience, attack their deepest prejudices, and shake them out of their complacent pride in the superiority of Greek masculinity. Alice Y. Chang

Finds no redress she finds no redress for her wrongs in society  The tragic hero is no longer a king, “one who is highly renowned and prosperous such as Oedipus,” but a woman who, because she finds no redress for her wrongs in society, is driven by her passion to violate that society’s most sacred laws in a rebellion against its typical representative, Jason, her husband. Alice Y. Chang

Earth and Sun  All through Medea the human beings involved call on the gods; two especially are singled out for attention: Earth and Sun.  It is by these two gods that Medea makes Aegeus swear to give her refuge in Athens, the chorus invokes them to prevent Medea’s violence against her sons, and Jason wonders how Medea can look on Earth and Sun after she has killed her own children.  These emphatic appeals clearly raise the question of the attitude of the gods, and the answer to the question is a shock. We are not told what Earth does, but Sun sends the magic chariot on which Medea makes her escape. Alice Y. Chang

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. Alice Y. Chang

Latest films  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.Tonino De BernardiIsabelle HuppertMédée MiracleJason  In 2009,"Medea" was shot by director Natalia Kuznetsova. Film was created by the tragedy of Seneca in a new for cinema genre of Rhythmodrama, in which the main basis of acting and atmosphere is music written before shooting. -  Kuznetsovahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Medea%22 Alice Y. Chang

電影版劇情簡介： (1970) 美狄亞，或譯米蒂亞，是古往今來最著名的復仇女性，也是所 有受背叛、嫉妒所苦的女性的守護神。爲了愛上一個外邦人傑 森，她抛卻公主地位、竊走國寶金羊毛、殺死弟弟，甘願隨夫 遠走他鄉、漂泊失所。然而她的勇敢愛情和偉大犧牲最終卻變 成一則笑話：丈夫決定另娶柯林斯公主，換取穩定名位。 美狄 亞走投無路之下，展開恐怖報復：先是獻毒衣焚殺丈夫的新 歡，繼而手刃兩個小孩，乘太陽神的華車遠颺，留下一無所 有的負心丈夫。 Alice Y. Chang

導演：皮耶‧保羅‧帕索里尼 Pier Paolo Pasolini  從希臘悲劇到現代戲劇，這個故事被翻寫過無數 回。 Pasolini 的版本抛開三一律 ( 注 ) 古典包袱，以 一位來自遠古的情欲象徵 ── 半人半馬怪爲敘事者， 把來龍去脈從頭說起。他到土耳其和敘利亞取鏡， 將場景拉回故事發生的高加索蠻荒世界，開場恍 如人類學影片：一場驚心動魄、交糅恐怖與狂喜 的原始儀式，美狄亞正是祭司，殺人獻祭的過程 呼應了後來的血腥報復手腕。兩性戰爭被轉化爲 美狄亞的史前泛靈世界與傑森的現代務實世界的 對比。美狄亞嫁給傑森後，在理性世界中彷佛淪 落得法力盡失。 Alice Y. Chang

ending  最後，在希臘悲劇中揚長而去的美狄亞，電影卻讓她消失 在熊熊烈焰中 ── 太陽神的華輦也被現實化了，直接關涉到 美狄亞的熾烈性情。就像《定理》中的性瓦解了中産價值， 《美狄亞》中的巫術神話力量也反撲了現代文明。 別以 爲你看錯了：飾演這位剛烈女性的，的確是歌劇女神瑪麗 亞卡拉絲。雖然她在片中從未開口歌唱，但那雙引人著魔 的眼睛仍然噴出了烈火。  natalia/4815/28316.html natalia/4815/28316.html Alice Y. Chang

Jason  [shouting into the house, as he shakes the doors] You slaves in there, remove the bar from this door at once, withdraw the bolts, so I may see two things— my dead sons and their murderer, that woman on whom I shall exact revenge. Alice Y. Chang

The exodus of Medea  Jason shakes the doors of the house, which remain closed.  Medea appears in a winged chariot, rising above the house. The bodies of the two children are visible in the chariot] Alice Y. Chang

Medea  Why are you rattling the doors like that, trying to unbar them so you can find their bodies and me, the one who killed them? Stop trying. If you want something from me, then say so, if you want to. But you'll never have me in your grasp, not in this chariot, a gift to me from my grandfather Helios, to protect me from all hostile hands. Alice Y. Chang

CHORUS [Exit Chorus]  Zeus on Olympus, dispenses many things. Gods often contradict our fondest expectations. What we anticipate does not come to pass. What we don't expect some god finds a way  to make it happen. So with this story. Alice Y. Chang

Translation:  Alice Y. Chang

The Life and Death of Jason Alice Y. Chang