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Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three central and problematic areas in which tragic heroines act independently of men: death ritual and lamentation, marriage, and the making of significant ethical choices. Her anthropological approach, together with her literary analysis, allows for an unusually rich context in which to understand gender relations in ancient Greece. This book examines, for example, the tragic response to legislation regulating family life that may have begun as early as the sixth century. It also draws upon contemporary studies of virtue ethics and upon feminist reconsiderations of the Western ethical tradition. Foley maintains that by viewing public issues through the lens of the family, tragedy asks whether public and private morality can operate on the same terms. Moreover, the plays use women to represent significant moral alternatives. Tragedy thus exploits, reinforces, and questions cultural clichés about women and gender in a fashion that resonates with contemporary Athenian social and political issues.

Bringing together the previously disparate fields of historical witchcraft, reception history, poetics, and psychoanalysis, this innovative study shows how the glamour of the historical witch, a spell that she cast, was set on a course, over a span of three hundred years from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, to become a generally broadcast glamour of appearance. Something that a woman does, that is, became something that she has. The antique heroine Medea, witch and barbarian, infamous poisoner, infanticide, regicide, scourge of philanderers, and indefatigable traveller, serves as the vehicle of this development. Revived on the stage of modernity by La Péruse in the sixteenth century, Corneille in the seventeenth, and the operatic composer Cherubini in the eighteenth, her stagecraft and her witchcraft combine, author Amy Wygant argues, to stun her audience into identifying with her magic and making it their own. In contrast to previous studies which have relied upon contemporary printed sources in order to gauge audience participation in and reaction to early modern theater, Wygant argues that psychoanalytic thought about the behavior of groups can be brought to bear on the question of \"what happened\" when the early modern witch was staged. This cross-disciplinary study reveals the surprising early modern trajectory of our contemporary obsession with magic. Medea figures the movement of culture in history, and in the mirror of the witch on the stage, a mirror both appealing and appalling, our own cultural performances are reflected. It concludes with an analysis of Diderot's claim that the historical process itself is magical, and with the moment in Revolutionary France when the slight and fragile body of the golden-throated singer, Julie-Angélique Scio, became a Medea for modernity: not a witch or a child-murderess, but, as all the press reviews insist, a woman.

This book is a philological and literary commentary on the first book of the Argonautica, a Latin epic written by Valerius Flaccus in the first century A.D.

The Argonautika,the only surviving epic of the Hellenistic era, is a retelling of the tale ofJason and the Golden Fleece,probably the oldest extant Greek myth. Peter Green's lively, readable verse translation captures the swift narrative movement of Apollonios's epic Greek. This expanded paperback edition contains Green's incisive commentary, introduction, and glossary. Alternate spelling: Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodius

This commentary examines the text of book 4 of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, and explicates sense and references, but above all, it provides a critical appreciation of the poetry, with a focus on wit, humor, elegance, subtlety, narrative skill and creative engagement with forerunners.

Literature relies heavily on mythology. Myths are stories of deities, monsters or immortals which are transformed from one generation to the other. In addition to documenting the religious and cultural experiences of a specific community, myths also outline the consequent literary, artistic and dramatic customs. Some Greek myths have survived for thousands of years because they accurately depict historical events, cultural values, and trends. Among the most famous classical myths are the myths of Medusa and Medea. As for the myth of Medusa, the earliest known record was found in Theogony (700BC) by Hesiod (8 th-7th century BC). A later version of the Medusa myth was made by the Roman poet Ovid (43BC –17/18AD), in his “Metamorphoses” (3-8 AD). Then again, Medea is a tragedy produced in 431 BC by the Greek playwright Euripides(480–406BC) based on the myth of Jason and Medea. Both Medusa and Medea are among the most fascinating and complex female protagonists in Greek mythology which have captivated many writers and playwrights for ages. In the twentieth century, there were many adaptations of both mythological figures; among these adaptations were those made by contemporary American and Irish women playwrights like Carol Lashof (1956-) and Marinna Carr (1964-). This paper examines the myths of Medusa and Medea and analyses the ways these myths are borrowed, refashioned and exploited in Lashof’s Medusa’s Tale (1991) and Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (1998). Both playwrights explore hidden dimensions of the traditional myths, combining elements from the old and modern worlds.

By looking at aspects of Medea that are largely overlooked in the criticism, this book aims at an open and multiple reading. It shows that stories presented in the drama of 5th century Athens are not unrelated to human beings who actually exist.

The contributions in this volume cover most of the issues that have been at the centre of scholarly interest in Apollonius and his epic Argonautica, ranging from the history of the text through questions of literary technique to the epic's reception.

The cento-tragedy Medea usually attributed to Hosidius Geta was transmitted in the Codex Salmasianus (now Codex Parisinus 10318). This is a comprehensive study and reevaluation of the text against the background of the ancient cento tradition, also providing a new English translation. After developing a new definition of the ancient conception of the cento in general, Geta's cento technique and his use of the Vergilian text as well as his relation to the Greek and Roman models for his Medea are examined. It is shown that his play is innovative and sophisticated in both technique and content.