Multiple Medeas

From Greece to Rome.
Read:
*Euripides, Medea (~420 BCE)
*Seneca, Medea (1st c. CE)


[note: I prefer you read both plays in Classical Tragedy, edited by Corrigan. The versions on the web are not translations we will use.]

Response papers:

1. Euripides' Medea is a Greek version. Seneca’s Medea is Roman. What, in your opinion, are the most significant differences? What do you suppose would be the effect of the two different approaches?

2. How might the differences in these plays give a clue to "scenographic models of sociometric processes" in Greece and Rome?  Even if you don't know a lot about Rome in distinction to Greece yet, can you briefly hypothesize? 
 




3. Why circulate images of violence? Or, conversely, why keep all violence off stage? Is violence replayed on stage documentary or  impossibly theatrical? What do you think? Should violence be explicit on stage, or implicit? You can use the two Medeas to think about this. Also helpful as something to think either with or against on these questions might be Susan Sontag's polemic on contemporary images of violence in Regarding the Pain of Others, pg. 3-15.
 

Image above, Medea at close of play in her chariot, two dead sons below her. Left, Medea and child. 




Left: Contemporary artist's rendition of Medea and sons



Right: Fragment of Seneca's manuscript







 


Above: Thomas Satterwhite Noble's 1867 painting, The Modern Medea, was based on the escaped and recaptured slave Margaret Garner who killed her own daughter rather than see her returned to slavery. 

No comments: