Cultural depictions of Medea

The dramatic episodes in which Greek mythology character Medea plays a role have ensured that she remains vividly represented in popular culture.

Medea by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (painted 1866-68); its rejection for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1868 caused a storm of protest

Literature

  • In Cicero's court case Pro Caelio, the name Medea is mentioned several times, as a way to make fun of Clodia, sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher, the man who exiled Cicero.
  • In the 15th-century Italian Arthurian romance La Tavola Ritonda, Medea lives on as the marvelously beautiful mistress of the island Perfida's Cruel Castle (Castello Crudele) in which she imprisons the hero Tristano (Tristan), as "every year she wanted to bent a [different] knight to her pleasure" for she was "the most lecherous woman in the world". Tristano, faithful to his true love Isolda, manages to escape from Medea's magic castle.
  • Jean Anouilh, Médée (1946)
  • John Gardner, Jason and Medeia
  • Robinson Jeffers, Medea
  • Hans Henny Jahnn, Medea
  • Maxwell Anderson, The Wingless Victory
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women (1386)
  • Michael Wood, In Search of Myths & Heroes: Jason and the Golden Fleece
  • Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou (Bost), Medea (parody of Medea of Euripides)
  • Regina Hansen Willman, Music for Medea
  • Robert Graves, Hercules, My Shipmate (novel by the English classicist, 1945)
  • Peter Kien, Medea, a play written while Kien was an inmate at the Theresienstadt concentration camp and never performed.
  • Medea (Ovid's lost tragedy - two lines are extant)[1]
  • Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats
  • A. R. Gurney, The Golden Fleece
  • Pierre Corneille, Médée (tragedy, 1635)
  • Ernest Legouvé, Médée (1855)
  • William Morris Life and Death of Jason (epic poem, 1867)
  • Franz Grillparzer, Das goldene Vliess (The Golden Fleece) (play, 1822)
  • Dorothy M. Johnson, Witch Princess (novel, 1967)
  • Otar Chiladze, A Man Was Going Down the Road (novel, 1973)
  • Chico Buarque and Paulo Pontes, Gota d'Água (musical play set in 1970s Rio de Janeiro, based on Euripides, 1975)
  • Heiner Müller, Medeamaterial and Medeaplay
  • Kate Braverman, Lithium for Medea, 1979
  • Percival Everett, For Her Dark Skin (novel, 1990)
  • H. M. Hoover, The Dawn Palace: The Story of Medea (novel, 1988)
  • Christa Wolf, Medea (a novel) (Medea: Stimmen) (published in German 1993, translated to English 1998)
  • Cherríe Moraga, The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (combines classical Greek myth Medea with Mexicana/o legend of La Llorona and Aztec myth of lunar deity Coyolxauhqui)
  • Stuart Hill, Blade Of Fire (Character portrayed as based on Medea in this Young adult novel)
  • Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero; Medea, having been resurrected by vengeful goddess Gaea (Mother Earth), runs a department store in Chicago. She appears again in The Burning Maze and is shown to work under Caligula.
  • Kerry Greenwood, Medea: Book III in the Delphic Women Series (1997) a retelling of the Jason and the Argonauts epic, focusing on the Princess and Priestess, Medea of Colchis.
  • Dea Loher, Manhattan Medea (1999) in German; play set in modern-day Manhattan; Medea and Jason are living as illegal immigrants, until Jason marries the daughter of a rich businessman, abandoning Medea and their child; the play takes place on their wedding night.
  • Jan Siegel, The Dragon Charmer (2000) A side note in an epic trilogy about witchcraft, sorcery, and magic.
  • Laurent Gaudé, Médée Kali (2003).
  • David Vann, Bright Air Black (2017) retells Medea's story in prose poetry from a third person perspective. It is both lyrical and mired in Bronze Age realism.
  • Madeline Miller, Circe (2018) narrates Medea's visit to her aunt Circe to be cleansed for the killing of her brother.
  • Ben Morgan, Medea in Corinth (2018) is a sequence of poems and dramatic interludes which focus on Medea's religious encounter with Hecate. It includes a sonnet sequence composed of letters to Creusa, her love rival, illuminating their relationship.

Art

Music

Cinema and television

Olivia Sutherland in MacMillan Films staging (2016)
  • In the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, Medea was portrayed by Nancy Kovack. Here, she is a temple dancer who Jason saves after her ship sinks, causing her to help him.
  • In 1969, the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini directed a film adaptation of Medea, featuring the opera singer Maria Callas in the title role.
  • The film A Dream of Passion in which Melina Mercouri, playing an actress portraying Medea, seeks out Ellen Burstyn, a mother who recently murdered her children.
  • In 1988, director Lars von Trier filmed his Medea for Danish television, using a pre-existing script by filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer. Cast included Udo Kier, Kirsten Olesen, Henning Jensen, and Mette Munk Plum.
  • In the 1992 film Highway to Hell, Medea was portrayed by Anne Meara.
  • In the 2000 Hallmark presentation Jason and the Argonauts, Medea was portrayed by Jolene Blalock.
  • In the 2002 biopic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera's previous wife Lupe Marín (played by Valeria Golino) and Frida Kahlo (played by Salma Hayek) talk of Lupe's response to Diego's infidelity. In response, Frida points a knife in a non-threatening gesture at Lupe, and calls her "Medea".
  • In the 2005 film L'enfer (Hell) a student Anne (Marie Gillain) takes a formal oral exam on the subject of Medea. Her words are spoken over images of her sister Sophie (Emmanuelle Béart) playing with her two children implying an analogy.[2]
  • In the 2004 visual novel as well as the anime adaptations of Fate/stay night, Medea appears as a relatively major character under the title of Caster.
  • In 2005, director Theo van Gogh created 6-part miniseries, moving Medea to Dutch politics.
  • In 2007, director Tonino De Bernardi filmed a modern version of the myth, set in Paris and starring Isabelle Huppert as Medea, called Médée Miracle. The character of Medea lives in Paris with Jason, who leaves her.
  • In 2009, Medea was shot by director Natalia Kuznetsova. Film was created by the tragedy of Seneca in a new-for-cinema genre of Rhythmodrama, in which the main basis of acting and atmosphere is music written before shooting.
  • In the 2013 television series Atlantis, Medea is portrayed by Scottish actress Amy Manson.
  • In the 2015 television series Olympus, Medea is portrayed by actress Sonita Henry.
  • In 2016, Olivia Sutherland played Medea in the MacMillan Films staging of Euripides' classic.
  • Between June and August 2016, the Cuban Broadcasting Radio Progreso presented the 60 chapters series The Mark of Medea written by Orelvis Linares and directed by Alfredo Fuentes. In the series, two women, played by the actresses Arlety Roquefuentes and Rita Bedias, commit crimes inspired by the myth of Medea. This first of them castrates her lover in revenge by his treason. The second one drowns her own four-year-old daughter in a pond because the baby disturbed her plans of living with her lover.

Theatre

  • Helen McCrory played Medea in the Royal National Theatre's acclaimed production in 2014.
  • Hannah Shepherd-Hulford played Medea in the Lost Dog dance-theatre production of Ruination at the Royal Opera House in 2022.

Video games

  • Liquid Entertainment's 2008 video game Rise of the Argonauts portrays Medea as a dark sorceress and a defector from a cult of Hecate-worshiping assassins.
  • Summoned as Servant Caster in mobile game Fate/Grand Order in two variants: as an adult who experienced Jason's betrayal already and as a young teen in the time of her just meeting Jason called "Medea Lily". In the stories of Fuyuki, Older Medea is darkened and has become an antagonist, while in the Okeanos storyline, where her younger self lies with Jason in the ship, Argo, she is both the protagonist and the antagonist.
  • The Persona of Chidori Yoshino in Atlus’ 2006 release, the fourth game in the Persona video game series; “Persona 3” and its subsequent rereleases (FES and Portable). In the game she is portrayed with the skull of a ram and curly yellow hair, most likely representing her involvement in the story of the golden fleece.

References

  1. Fragments are printed and discussed by Theodor Heinze, Der XII. Heroidenbrief: Medea an Jason Mit einer Beilage: Die Fragmente der Tragödie Medea P. Ovidius Naso. (in series Mnemosyne, Supplements, 170. 1997.
  2. "Film Fest Journal: L'Enfer, 2005". filmref.com. Archived from the original on 12 March 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.