Through a Glass Darkly
Medea as a Reluctant Goddess
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21204303 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christopher Vasillopulos, Christopher Vasıllopulos (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 41-56 |
| Publication date | 2014-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Jung Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1934-2039 • E-ISSN: 1934-2047 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/19342039.2014.866033 |
| OpenAlex | W1519205572 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Playing upon a mythological tradition rich in terrible, ruthless, and powerful females—many of whom were actually bestial—Euripides chose perhaps the most horrible of all, at least to fathers, the teknophonos (the child-killing mother), as the central character of his play Medea. Medea has been considered, in Euripides's portrayal as well as more generally, an archetype of the Terrible Mother. Whatever the relationship between the psychoanalytical category of the Terrible Mother and the several female monsters of Greek mythology, an appreciation of the motif as a source of male anxiety, to say the least, provides a framework of analysis for one of the central ideas of Medea: the capacity of women for ferocious and violent acts, including becoming a teknophonos. Medea illustrated this capacity for transformation in a peculiarly rich and complex way. No Grendel's Dam, she had semidivine status, became a devoted wife and mother, and lived as a human, notwithstanding her violent acts on behalf of Jason, her eventual husband. Under provocation, she resumed her divine powers, expressing them with horrific effect and to her great joy. With great reluctance and regret, she achieved her apotheosis by the sacrificing of her beloved sons to herself. Thus, the granddaughter of Helios became the Goddess of the Lost Synthesis
Aesthetics · Apotheosis · Archetype · Art · Greek mythology · Literature · Mythology · Psychoanalysis · Theology · Wife · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |