Unit:
Speciality Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Anglophone Literature and CultureLibrary of the School of Philosophy
Supervisors info:
Professor Konstantinos Blatanis, Faculty of English Language and Literature, Department of Literature and Culture, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Dr. Christina Dokou, Faculty of English Language and Literature, Department of Literature and Culture, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Original Title:
When the body says no: Moving the Medea Myth from Dissonance to Resonance
Translated title:
When the Body Says No: Moving the Medea Myth from Dissonance to Resonance
Summary:
An examination of three adaptations of Medea: "Demea" by Guy Butler, "The Hungry Woman" by Cherrie Moraga and "Medea, Queen of Colchester" by Marianne McDonald. The Medea characters in this study emphasise the body itself as the site of contending identities in three plays that interrogate the conditions that drove Medea to say no rather than acquiesce to the conditions imposed on her. Each play examines a certain historical, geographical and cultural context that apprehends Medea in terms of her marginal, exiled status as a woman and an ethnic Other within the domestic space and the nation-space. Belonging is experienced within a gendered, racialized, and/or nationalist space where the body of Medea is a discursive construct ready to implode or explode with the rupture and dissonance it can no longer contain. The aim of this study is to uncover within the breach that Medea presents, those interstitial spaces where bodily suffering may lead to liberation through drama.
Main subject category:
Language – Literature
Keywords:
Medea, myth, sociocultural context, dissonance, resonance
