Greek Tragedy, Euripides and Medea

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

2. The fifth century BCE and intellectual revolution Alice Y. Chang 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.

3. Mysterious + contemporary Alice Y. Chang 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.

4. Pericles and Oedipus Alice Y. Chang 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.

5. EURIPIDES 480-406 B.C. Alice Y. Chang

6. 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

7. The Works of Euripides • Alcestis   Written 438 B.C.E Andromache   Written 428-24 B.C.E The Bacchantes   Written 410 B.C.E • 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 Alice Y. Chang

8. Works of Euripides • Iphigenia At Aulis   Written 410 B.C.E Iphigenia in Tauris   Written 414-412 B.C.E    Translated by Robert Potter Medea   Written 431 B.C.E    Translated by E. P. Coleridge • 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 Alice Y. Chang

9. Medea • an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medeaand 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

10. Jason bringing Pelias the Golden Fleece Alice Y. Chang

11. Medea Alice Y. Chang 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.

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14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

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20. 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

21. 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

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23. Luigi Cherubini: Medea http://www.amazon.com/Luigi-Cherubini-Medea/dp/B001JFKW8A/ref=sr_1_6?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1293028145&sr=1-6 Alice Y. Chang

24. 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

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

26. Ironic expression Alice Y. Chang 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.

27. rejected by his contemporaries Alice Y. Chang • 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.

28. Private and intellectual life Alice Y. Chang 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.

29. Questioning the received ideas Alice Y. Chang 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.

30. 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

31. The citizen rights? Alice Y. Chang 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).

32. Anti-social Alice Y. Chang 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.

33. Earth and Sun Alice Y. Chang • 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.

34. The Magic Chariot Alice Y. Chang 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.

35. rejected by most of his contemporaries • 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

36. Iconoclastic • 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. • 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

37. great intellectual power • She is not just a woman and a foreigner, she is also a person of great intellectual power. • 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

38. Finds no redress • 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

39. 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

40. 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

41. 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. • 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. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Medea%22 Alice Y. Chang

42. 電影版劇情簡介： (1970) http://www.imdb.cn/title/tt0066065 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

43. 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

44. 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。 • http://video.mail.ru/mail/karelina-natalia/4815/28316.html Alice Y. Chang

45. 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

46. 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

47. Medea • Why are you rattling the doors like that, trying to unbar them so you can findtheir 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

48. 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

49. Translation: • https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm Alice Y. Chang

50. The Life and Death of Jason Alice Y. Chang