NEW Ancient Athens Greece Euripides Sorceress Medea Argonaut Jason Golden Fleece

Description: Euripides: Medea, Translated by Rex Warner (Unabridged). DESCRIPTION: Softcover: 80 pages. Publisher: Prestwick House; (2005). To make Medea more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone EditionTM includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. In doing this, it is our intention that the reader may more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama. Witch, barbarian, foreigner, or a woman wronged and committed to the most horrific kind of justice, Medea is a heroine who makes her audience shudder. Euripides shows us an astonishingly strong female protagonist, whom some readers have identified as the first feminist in Western literature. Seeing where her strength leads her, though, we must wonder if she was intended to be portrayed a model or as a warning. Because the three other plays that were traditionally performed with Medea have been lost, it is difficult to say whether Euripides’ Athenian audience was as upset by the play as modern readers are. It won only third place at the biggest festival in the city, indicating that ancient audiences also found it controversial. With its still-relevant examination of marriage, love, and revenge, and its explicit scenes of mental and emotional agony, Medea continues to demand our attention. CONDITION: New, never read. PLEASE SEE IMAGES BELOW FOR SAMPLE PAGES FROM INSIDE OF BOOK. PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW. PUBLISHER REVIEW: REVIEW: One of antiquity’s greatest poets, Euripides has been prized in every age for the pathos, terror, and intellectual probing of his dramatic creations. Athens of the fifth century B.C.E. represents one of the towering achievements of civilization. It is the crucible in which Western Civilization was given form. It created democracy: rule by the people. Of the three supreme tragedians of Classical Athens, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Euripides (480-406 B.C.) is the most modern. His people are no longer the heroes of Aeschylus, inspired by Homer and the Heroic world of war and warriors. Nor are they the more humanistic characters of Sophocles, who created men and women of grand moral integrity. Rather, Euripides' people are psychologically drawn, they are frequently petty, conniving, and conflicted. In other words, they are like us. REVIEW: One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, “Medea” centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea. Having married Medea and fathered her two children, Jason abandons her for a more favorable match, never suspecting the terrible revenge she will take. Euripides’ masterly portrayal of the motives fiercely driving Medea’s pursuit of vengeance for her husband’s insult and betrayal has held theatre audiences spellbound for more than twenty centuries. Rex Warner’s authoritative translation brings this great classic of world literature vividly to life. PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS: REVIEW: Deserted by Jason, whose life she saved at a great cost to herself and others, and forced into exile by the father of her rival in love, Medea plots a barbaric revenge. The consequences wrought by her destructive actions, and by those who underestimate her bewitching power, are harrowing. Accessible, but not prosaic, vivid but not overstated, poetic but not inflated. REVIEW: Here Euripides stands, in vigorous English versions that fully do him justice. The most modern of the Greek tragedians has found a compelling modern form. A boon for classicists and general readers alike. For the reader who comes to tragedy for the first time, these translations are eminently “accessible”. For the classicist, these versions constitute an ambitious reinterpretation of traditional masterpieces. READER REVIEWS: REVIEW: "Medea," the play by Euripides was first produced in 431 B.C. After more than two millennia, this remains a powerfully written human tragedy. "Medea" tells a story involving the classical Greek hero Jason and Medea, by whom he has fathered two children. As the play opens, Jason has angered Medea by taking on another woman to be his wife. This conflict drives the drama forward. "Medea" is a gripping story about love, parenthood, politics, betrayal, anger, and revenge. There is a subtle but fascinating theme of ethnic tension as Medea and Jason clash. I believe that, after all these centuries, Euripides' sociological and psychological insights remain compelling. REVIEW: The great screen writers and directors of the last century have nothing on Euripides when it comes to being an innovator of art. Euripides tore away the shackles of the "how to write a play" of his day, Aristotelian dramatic theory. In the process, modern Western drama was born. His play “Medea” is a prime example. At first glance “Medea” does, in some respects, exemplify Aristotle's requirements for a tragedy. However, the play violates Aristotle's vision more than it corresponds to it. It does this through untraditional content and innovation. In layout and movement of the plot, Medea closely matches the form of Aristotle's standard example of a tragedy, Sophocles' “Oedipus Rex”. “Medea” shares Oedipus's convention of beginning with the perspective of a mournful look back on the events that are about to be told. Medea is highborn and descends from the lineage of the Gods. This in some ways fulfills Aristotle's requirement that the protagonist be exceptional. Likewise, both Medea and Oedipus depict what Aristotle would call "terrible and piteous events”. However, this is where the similarity with Aristotle's ideal of the tragic ends. The character of Medea is the main wrench that Euripides throws into Aristotle's description of tragedy. Aristotle's idea of the tragic hero demanded a change of experience and fortune that entails unmerited suffering on the part of the character and a fearful viewing of events on behalf of the audience. These things do not happen in “Medea”. Medea has a history. She has killed spitefully and coldly in the past. She continues to do so throughout the play. She never even faces the threat of a fall from a high station because she secures sanctuary in Athens before she sets her revenge into motion (incidentally, one comes to feel like the psalmist who wrote: "I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree in its native soil"--though in this case it is a wicked woman). Euripides uses “Medea” to make a commentary, not to bring about that lynch-pin of Aristotelian drama: catharsis. “Medea” does not attempt to meet up with Aristotle's requirements. Instead, it is becomes new form of art; tragedy as social commentary. Euripides shows himself to be among the great artistic innovators in history by his transformation of a received dramatic form into something different but wholly effective in its own way. REVIEW: Honestly reading this story overwhelmed me. Considering how short the play is, at the end I found myself mentally and emotionally exhausted. "Medea" explores many different themes that are still present in life today. Although I found her undying attachment to Jason annoying, I understood after reading the play how love and revenge can overpower one’s mind. I felt as if Euripides toyed with the fact that women are both the weakest and the strongest in relationships. Medea's passion was overwhelming as a reader because I felt like it was a cry for attention rather than a true plea of lost love. Euripides' "Medea" although short, is very intense and filled with many emotions. I was lucky enough to see an amazing performance of this play. If done thoughtfully, it can engage you to the point where you sympathize with Medea and are annoyed by her at the same time. REVIEW: I thought “Medea” was pretty interesting to read, especially since I found it difficult to decide whether I supported Medea's decisions throughout the play. So much to go through just to inflict pain on her former husband Jason! I understood her reasoning for revenge, which was fueled by hurt and grief, and enjoyed the fact that unlike most women in ancient Athens, Medea took action when she was wronged. Like the women in the Chorus, I supported Medea. However, when Medea goes as far as to kill her own children, I was disappointed that Medea found Jason's agony to be more important than the lives of her own two sons. Overall, I enjoyed reading “Medea”, though I would have liked to have known if any guilt managed to catch up to Medea afterwards. REVIEW: Euripide's "Medea" certainly has an interesting plotline similar to that of many drama series and movies of today: man falls in love with woman who saved his life, man and woman marry and have kids, man has affair with a king's daughter, wife seeks revenge. What makes this story different from the cheesy revenge stories of today is that Euripides, like other Ancient Greek writers, brings in the question of what is morally right or wrong according to the Greek gods who treasure obedience and trust, more than anything. So! In "Medea," where Jason denies the life-saving help he received from Medea and disobeys her by having an affair with a higher-class person, and Medea is extremely pained by Jason and performs the most inhumane revenge, who is more wrong? To rephrase this question, to what extent of inhumanity is a revenge valid/morally right for the oh-so-important Greek gods to accept? Throughout the book, it was very difficult for me to support either Medea, who is extremely suffering from her husband's affair that she could kill herself, or Jason, who just wants to get away from his wife to start a new, higher-class life with his children. However, I think that it is this inner conflict of who to A. sympathize with emotionally or B. support because he or she is "justified/right", that makes the reader really question his or her viewpoint of extreme situations, making this book sincerely amazing. I always ship books Media Mail in a padded mailer. 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