Medea
byEuripedes
Study Guide
Part 1 – Language and Gender, Language and Power, Language and Belief,
Language and Translation
Part 3 – Literature: Text and Context
Part 4 – Literature: Critical Study
If you are not familiar with the conventions and settings for Greek tragedy, Tragedy: The Basics or Introduction to Greek Tragedy will help you get oriented.You may also find this video helpful:
Introduction to Medea Required Reading
Euripides' Medea - a presentation
1.What background facts do we learn from the Nurse's opening speech?
2.What new trouble has the Tutor heard of?
3.Why does the Nurse fear for Medea's children?
4.Why does the Nurse say she prefers not to be great?
5.Whom do the members of the Chorus represent?
6.What excuse does Euripides use to bring Medea out in front of her house?
7.What role did women play in ancient Greek society? (See especially ll. 229-56.)
8.How is Medea's situation worse than it would be if she were a native of the city?
9.What promise does Medea ask for and receive from the Chorus?
10.What new misfortune does Kreon bring to Medea?f
Medea (1983) played by Zoe Caldwell video
11.According to Medea, no sensible person would want clever children. Why?
12.Why is Kreon's love for his home and family especially bitter to Medea?
13.What one request of Medea's does Kreon grant? Is he really being merciful?
14.What does Medea resolve to do?
15.Who was Medea's grandfather? (See l. 403.)
16.According to the Chorus, which sex is cruel and deceitful toward the other? Why have poets said otherwise?
17.Whom does Jason blame for Medea's sorrow?
18.What has Medea done for Jason?
19.What justifications does Jason offer for his actions?
20.How do Medea and the Chorus respond to Jason's defense?
21.What does the Chorus say about what makes love desirable or not desirable?
22.Who swears to help Medea IF she comes safely to his land? (Why would this part get special attention from the play's original audience?)
23.What terrible plan does Medea reveal to the Chorus? Why will she do it?
24.Why does the Chorus praise Athens in ll. 808-21?
25.Why does Medea speak of women as she does in ll. 865-69?
26.What are Medea and the Chorus thinking of in ll. 870-82? Does Jason understand? Why are his next words ironic? Why does Medea weep again?
27.What struggle occurs in Medea in ll. 1035-1042?
28.According to the Chorus, the childless are more fortunate than those who have children. Why?
29.How do Medea and the audience learn about the fate of Kreon and his daughter? (Compare this with the way we learn of Jocasta's death and Oedipus's blinding in Oedipus the King.)
30.How is the death of Medea's children staged?
31.Why is Jason's speech in ll. 1268-1280 ironic?
32.What satisfaction does Medea find in her horrible deed? (See l. 1337.)
33.What final comfort does Medea refuse to allow Jason to have?
34.How does the play end? Does this suggest that the gods approve of Medea's actions?
Some points to think about: Euripides produced this play about the fury of a mistreated foreign woman in 431 BCE, just as Athens, at the height of its oppressive empire (Athenian "allies" were subject states), began its fatal war with Sparta.
What does the fate of Medea and of those who mistreat and oppress her say to its own time?
Might it shed any light on the problem of terrorism in our own time?
What happens to the characters of both when one human being treats another as Jason treats Medea?
What happens to Medea when she gets her terrible revenge?
Does this play inspire "pity [for unmerited suffering] and fear [for the suffering of someone like ourselves]" as Aristotle says tragedy should do?
Or does it simply horrify us?