Euripides’ Medea: Mythic Context and the Sense of Futurity

Abstract

Despite the high praise it has received from critics and the interest it has inspired in nearly every age, Euripides’ Medea offers certain problems in interpretation which have never been satisfactorily resolved. It is rather paradoxical, in fact, that a play of such enduring vitality should so often have been found unsatisfactory in one aspect or another. Adverse criticisms generally have been directed at three problems: the interpretation of the character of Medea, the purpose and relevance of the scene with Aegeus, and the resolution of the play. The first source of difficulty, a certain ambivalence in Euripides’ characterization of Medea, has evoked contradictory claims: that she is “one of the most tragic figures of the tragic stage,” but that she arouses no tragic pity in the spectator; that she is a brilliant achievement in humanizing a legendary figure; that, on the contrary she is not intended to appear human but primarily supernatural and demonic.