Myth, Mother, Monster: Jeffers' Medea as a Teaching Text

• Published in: Jeffers studies 2021-01, Vol.21, p.79-115
• Main Author: Chew, Kathryn
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Actors; American literature; Audiences; Children; Civil war; Classical literature; Euripides (c 485-406 BC); Greek literature; Higher education; Jeffers, Robinson (1887-1962); Plutarch (46?-120?); Poetry; Politics; Teaching; Tragedies; War; Women
• ISSN: 1096-5076

[...]my institution, California State University, Long Beach, hosted the annual Robinson Jeffers Association conference in 2011, I was unaware of how many of my colleagues in English classrooms across the country use Jeffers' adaptation of Euripides' Medea to introduce the myth to their students, an accessible modernization deeply rooted in the original, which creates a dialogue between differing conceptions and uses of this foundational Greek myth. [...]Aspasia's classification as "foreign" was a function of a law enacted by Pericles, before he had met her, that promoted Athenian nationalism by defining as foreigners all those not of Athenian parentage.2 Pericles' law also strictly forbade marriage with foreigners. In an age where spousal displays of affection were far from typical, Pericles was known to kiss Aspasia twice a day, upon leaving and returning home, scandalously uxorious by Athenian standards (24.8).10 Moreover, when Aspasia was indicted for impiety, on the grounds of running an establishment for courtesans, Pericles moved the jurors by weeping openly in court and won her acquittal (32.1). Since self-control was seen as the quintessential characteristic of the Greek man,11 and Aspasia was suspected of corrupting and weakening Pericles, Euripides transfers this "foreign" and emasculating lack of restraint to Medea. Medea, too, can be seen as the destroyer of both Jason and Corinth, through her personal crime, the murder of her children, and the civil crime of royal assassination and regicide, the murder of the Corinthian princess and king.