![]() ![]() She uses feminine tools at first to try and get her way (manipulation, subterfuge, trickery, poison), but in the end she resorts to masculine means to destroy Jason by killing her children. Medea exhibit masculine ways of speaking, using rhetorical, logical arguments in her defence, and often perform acts of bloody violence. Extreme Others are not only outsiders in their society, being female, but they also transgress the established boundaries which keep masculine and feminine apart. Medea falls under the category of an “extreme Other”. Barbarians are superstitious the Greeks are rational. Barbarians are savage the Greeks are not. The Other is also essential for self-definition: as the Greeks ascribe certain traits to barbarians, they are implying certain things about themselves. The Other is a complex and multifaceted concept: it comprises the foreign, the exotic, the unknown, the feared. ![]() ![]() The playwright puts Medea’s otherness on full display in his text, granting complexity to this characteristic of Medea she is not only a foreigner because of her birthplace, but also because she destroyed said home, leaving her untethered to the land of her ancestors. ![]() Euripides takes these traits and elevates them to new heights in his play. In this Greek tragedy, Euripides crafts a tale that centres around the complexities of Medea’s character: her cleverness, sorcery, murderous tendencies, and her status as a foreigner. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |