#sacrifice in this culture! whatmedea represents! how she wins all of her mental duels with her husband and yet that doesn’t help her bc of | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lafcadiosadventures · 6 months ago

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the idea that ancient greek tragedy and mythology* are universal has hindered the way we read those texts so much. it encourages a superficial reading that separates eminently political genres from their sociohistorical context

*not talking about comedy bc most ppl ignore greek comedy, i feel

#inspired by the frenchmen dissing the freudian takes in oedipus #but also medea. deep diving into sociohistorical context is key #ppl understandably get stuck on medea killing her children. overlooking that-> this is an invention of euripides! the bagage of child #sacrifice in this culture! whatmedea represents! how she wins all of her mental duels with her husband and yet that doesn’t help her bc of #her lower social status-> she is a barbarian on top of a woman #everything about euripides’ medea is incredibly ambivalent and that becomes clearer with the context #what i am saying is not that the play isn’t understandable unless you read a TON on bibliography. what I am saying is #thinking we understand something leads us to judge it with our own values/morals etc #when it should encourage us to try and put ourselves in the place of the ppl in that culture #how they would have read it and why those characters are written like that in the first place

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