Euripides: Medea

Comprehensive edition of this classic play aimed at second-year students and above.

Euripides (Author), Donald J. Mastronarde (Edited by)

9780521643863, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 August 2002

440 pages
18.7 x 12.4 x 3 cm, 0.465 kg

'… this series has consistently proven itself to provide high quality commentaries for teaching Greek texts in the original. Mastronarde's fine work does not disappoint. … this is a volume which will prove very useful to students of Greek tragedy in the original and will also be a valuable resource for professional colleagues.' Hermathena

This up-to-date edition makes Euripides' most famous and influential play accessible to students of Greek reading their first tragedy as well as to more advanced students. The introduction analyzes Medea as a revenge-plot, evaluates the strands of motivation that lead to her tragic insistence on killing her own children, and assesses the potential sympathy of a Greek audience for a character triply marked as other (barbarian, witch, woman). A unique feature of this book is the introduction to tragic language and style. The text, revised for this edition, is accompanied by an abbreviated critical apparatus. The commentary provides morphological and syntactic help for inexperienced students and more advanced observations on vocabulary, rhetoric, dramatic techniques, stage action, and details of interpretation, from the famous debate of Medea and Jason to the 'unmotivated' entrance of Aegeus and the controversial monologue of Medea.

General introduction
Structural elements of Greek tragedy
Language and style
Prosody and metre
MEDEA
Commentary
Appendix: Medea's great monologue.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Plays, playscripts [DD]