Euripedes Essay Example for Free

Euripedes turn outThe beginnings of literature are sowed in fictions. They reflect the preoccupations of the myths celebrate the primal human emotions like love, hate, sexual desires, riposte and heroism, some others are equally horrendous dealing with some heinous crimes like murder and rape. No matter what aspect of life do they reflect it is their universality that makes them popular in different cultures and time? The myth of Inos is such an example. The fable of Inos dates back many centuries before Christ to ancient Rome and Greece. fit in to the myth, Inos, the daughter of Cadmus is married by Athama, exponent of pre historic Minyans in the ancient Boeotian city of Orchomenus. King Athama falls in love with the innocent beauty of Inos and neglects his own wife, Nephele, who disappears in anger. They convey two sons, Laerchus and Melicertes . Inos besides nurses Dionysus, thus incurs the wrath of Hera, the wife of Zeus. Inos is subsequently driven mad and in her m adness kills herself and her two sons. She is afterwards worshipped by ancient Greeks as Leucothea, the White Goddess.The subtitle of Inos is found in different move of world with slight variations. Euripides one of the great giants of Greek tragedy was perhaps the first who used the legend of Inos in his tragedy Medea, when he composed it in 480 B. C. His tragedy complemented to the myth of Inos so well it became more than popularly known as the legend of Medea. While in love with Jason, Euripides Medea helps him steal the golden thieve from her father, King Aeechis of Colchis. Thus, betraying her own clan. She is subsequently abandoned by her husband, who leaves her to marry Creusa, daughter of Creon, king of Corinth.In despair Medea kills herself and her two sons. She however, goes unpunished and escapes in the dragon chariot. She takes refuge with king Aegeus of Athens. She later marries Achilles in the underworld and becomes immortal. Medea therefore, becomes the heroin of the tragedy, whereas, its her husband who suffers for betraying his wife. The legend of Medea, represents the cultural conflicts, racism and sexual urge prejudices working on the individual lives of the characters. The employment of these phenomena in the evolution and degeneration of the characters, makes the legend universal in its appeal.It is for this reason that flush in the twentyfirst coulomb, writers incorporated the myth in the modern characters as in Wide Sargasso sea by Jean Rhys. get dressed between the characters of the Carribean and England, Wide Sargasso Sea emphsise the above mentioned phenomena working on its individual characters. The novel is indite in the post modern post colonial settings. Immediately after the emancipation of the Carribean blacks. It narrates the story of Anoinette later renamed as Bertha, belonging to dominica, a city of British owned Jamaica. She is married to an English man.It is eventually this kind that derives young and innocen t Annoinette to a mad woman Bertha, who later on commits suicide. The story narrates how the cultural, racial and gender prejudices makes individuals vulnerable. The novel is often seen as an adaptation of Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre written in 1886, with the same story outline, however, the authorized source dates back to the legend of Medea or more precisely the myth of Inos. Like medea, she marries a foreigner, and is later exploited by him for her racial inferiority and gender bias. Euripedes medea is an enchantress.Her weakness as a woman is unfastened when exploited by her husband. She, however, comes out as a resolute and vindictive person. She is portrayed as watertight and completely in control of her self. Till the end when she kills her kids, she is contemplative and logically derives herself to commit their murder. Whereas, Rhyss Bertha is blessed to her madness by the social as well as biological factors. The novel seems more of an onrush that how the social factor s catalyses the biological deseases. Her death, however, gives her the same endure that Medea enjoyed over her husband.For Rochester, she remained his property even in her madness. He says towards the end, even though she is mad, she is mine. This possessiveness is given away by her finished her death. Just as Medea escapes unpunished in a dragon chariot before her husbands eyes. It is interesting to note that how a twentyfirst carbon african woman writer incorporates the same myth used by the Greek tragedian of fifth century Before Christ. A deeper study regarding the history of the myth will unfold that how the myth of Inos undergoes different versions through out centuries and claims its authority in various cultures.After Euripedes, Publius Ovidius Naso, the Roman poet of 49 B. C. used the story in his own work which influenced Lucius Anneus Seneca the famous Hispano- Roman tragedian of 4 century B. C. at Corduba (Cordoba). Scholars believe that Seneca might have brought the original legend of Inos to Spain thorugh his own intellectual influence. However, the inscriptions on the stones at Maikop, 56 miles east of the Black Sea near Colchis, reveal the story of Jason and his Argonauts. According to the legend of Medea, Jason and his Argonauts travel to Colchis and it is there that he meets Medea.It seemed through the staggering discovery, that the whole legend or some parts of the legend might be true. The pheonicians of the 12th to eighth centuries before Christ, then present at colchis a region of the Western Georgian Socialist Soviet Republics, are supposed to transport the legend to Spain later when they themselves settled in the Iberian peninsula. It is through Spain that the legend passed on to Africa and from there to America along with slave trade. It is exceptionally popular with the Afro- Americans, who imagine her to be in real, wandering in dark forests and shrieking.Toni Morrison, another of the celebrated Afro- American writer draws a like sassy figure of a phantom in her novel Beloved. In whatever version the legend of Medea appear, it projects very effectively the apparent triumph of the male sex over female, whereas, it is the weaker sex that despise the vitellus of her stronger counter part and sets themselves free in the ultimate analysis. Therefore, the story becomes one of betrayal, vengeance and triumph. It is the ultimate triumph of the weak over the strong that the story remains a favourite with the writers and readers alike especially by the women writers in patriarchal societies.