Publication details
Médeia jako protagonistka uprchlické krize
| Title in English | Medea as the Protagonist of a Refugee Crisis |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Ideológia v premenách času v pamiatkach gréckej a latinskej tradície |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | Medea; reception of the myth; Christa Wolf; novel „Medea: Stimmen” |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The character of Medea has attracted the attention of scholars for centuries. Different epochs with various social systems and ideologies have left their imprint on her story. At the turn of the 20th century, a lot of literary works arose aiming to absolve Jason’s wife from the guilt attributed to her over all the long years of literary tradition. The paper deals with one of these works: the novel Medea: Stimmen by Christa Wolf. In her novel, Wolf, with the use of inner monologues of several characters, presents diverse views on the events taking place in Colchis and Corinth. While demonstrating an outstanding knowledge of many antecedent forms of the myth of Medea, she casts a new light on the particular motives of various adaptations. Just like the rationalistic exegetes, Wolf primarily aims to free the myth from the fantastic burden of tradition. Wolf’s successfully applied demythization of features defying all logic (the Golden Fleece and Medea’s magical powers) is quickly replaced with a mythicizing which shows how the myth about an evil killer and initiator of all the poverty in Corinth was created. All these things are situated in the unusual circumstances of a political crisis in Colchis. The novel is therefore a probe into the relationship between political refugees (the people of Colchis with Medea in the lead) and their hosts (the arrogant inhabitants of Corinth), and as such it is presented in this study. |
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