Abstract

Seneca's Medea exhibits its protagonist in a world — it seems — without justice, a victim of the broken faith of Jason and Creon, of a cultural isolation resulting from the Argonautic expedition, a prisoner of her past actions. During the play Medea develops ‘a freedom of indifference’ through her scelus, her ‘crime’: the killing of Creon and Creusa, the destruction of Corinth, the murder of her children. Medea achieves this freedom from the ties of the world, not by killing her children, the objects of her love, but by destroying her love for Jason which makes those children and all else in life of value. In the following analysis of the play particular attention is given to the development of the figure of Medea. Attention is also given to the evolution of the verbal, imagistic, symbolic and ideological patterns which clarify the significance of that development and the tragedy's thematic focus.

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