1. Tragedy, Politics and Gender Assistant Professor Sandrine Bertaux
Euripides, Medea
Tragedy, Politics and Gender
Assistant Professor Sandrine Bertaux

2. Tragedy today From Merriam-Webster online:

3. Tragedy today
A tragedy today evokes great sufferings and death; It is a visual spectacle arousing feeling of compassion predicated on a restricted sense of humanity that is, the innocence of the victims ( i.e. a child); The politics of compassion as de-politicization.

4. Tragedy, Politics and Theatre in the Golden Age of Athens
Theatre as a political institution
Tragedy: the most influential cultural innovation of Golden Age Athens.
The tragedians
Patriarchal society and the revenge of a mother

5. Athens

6. Theatre, a political institution
Origins of tragedy:
Tragedy : goat-song
Aristotle Poetics: emerged from the improvisation of the dithyramb
Vs.
Historian Moses I. Finley: Theatre, encounter of epic and tragedy, “revolutionary invention” of Athens
Importance of speech in Athens

7. Tragedy at the Great Dionysia
theatre: a public affair, state-sponsored.
Performance of Athenian tragedies: over three days at the annual religious festival of the Great Dionysia.
Competition between authors: three were chosen to present three tragedies in a row (trilogy) followed by a semicomic play.
First-rate actors were assigned by lottery to playwrights
Prizes awarded to authors, actors, and producers modest; but it does bring enormous fame

8. Theatre of Dionysus, Athens It could seat 15,000 spectators

9. Rigid masks

10. The tragedians
Aeschylus ( BCE), Sophocles ( BCE), Euripides ( BCE): together 300 plays; only 32 survived.
Myths flexible: Euripides innovates, Medea kills her children.
For Aristole, Poetics, tragedy’s aim is the catharsis effect (tragic pleasure) on the audience. Euripides’ Medea is inconsistent: the presence of Aegeus and the denouement (Deus ex machina).

11. Patriarchal society
Tragedy: a reflection of the political implications of moral issues: women are not citizens in Athens:
Medea (248): “They we [women] live sheltered lives in the home, free from danger, while they wield their spears in battle-What fools they are! I would much rather face the enemy three times over than bear a child once.”
Euripides connects the social order with the political order implying that the former is fundamental to the latter.

12. Killing sons
Line : “It makes me groan to think what deed I must do next. For I shall kill my own children; no one shall take them from me. I will wreak havoc on all Jason’s house and then quit this land, to escape the charge of murdering my beloved children, after daring to do a deed that is abominable indeed.” Would it still be relevant for Medea to kill her children if they were girls?

13. Medea, a Tragic Character?
Merriam-Webster:
2-a : “A serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (such as destiny) and having sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror.”
Does Medea encounter a disastrous conclusion? Does she elicit pity or terror? Is she just a Barbarian sorceress after all?