Medea

More about the book

From Euripides to Seneca, from Pasolini to Heiner Müller, Medea, the mother who kills her own children, has always represented extreme feminine power, embodying an almost supernatural force. In the early 1920s, Medea appears in the work of Franz Grillparzer, stripped of the more heroic traits of the myth and enriched with subtle and modern inner motivations. She is portrayed as weaker and seemingly inert in her confrontation with the masculine, willing to relinquish her magical knowledge and barbaric identity for Jason. However, when her integration into Greek civilization proves impossible, Grillparzer's Medea regains the power of the myth through the ultimate act of suffering, enacting her revenge in a gesture far more tragic than suicide.