Euripides' Medea, produced in the year that the Peloponnesian War began, presents the first in a parade of vivid female tragic protagonists across the Euripidean stage. Throughout the centuries it has been regarded as one of the most powerful of the Greek tragedies. McDermott's starting point is an assessment of the character of Medea herself. She confronts the question: What does an audience do with a tragic protagonist who is at once heroic, sympathetic, and morally repugnant? We see that the play portrays a world from which all order has been deliberately and pointedly removed and in which the very reality or even potentiality of order is implicitly denied. Euripides' plays invert, subvert, and pervert traditional assertions of order; they challenge their audience's most basic tenets and assumptions about the moral, social, and civic fabric of mankind and replace them with a new vision based on clearly articulated values of his own. One who seeks for &"meaning&" in this tragedy will come closest to finding it by examining everything in the play (characters, their actions, choruses, mythic plots and allusions to myth, place within literary traditions and use of conventions) in close conjunction with a feasible reconstruction of the audience's expectations in each regard, for we see that it is a keynote of Euripides' dramaturgy to fail to fulfill these expectations. This study proceeds from the premise that Medea's murder of her children is the key to the play. We see that the introduction of this murder into the Medea-saga was Euripides' own innovation. We see that the play's themes include the classic opposition of Man and Woman. Finally, we see that in Greek culture the social order is maintained by strict adherence within the family to the rule that parents and children reciprocally nurture one another in their respective ages of helplessness. Through the heroine's repeated assaults on this fundamental and sacred value, the playwright most persuasively portrays her as an incarnation of disorder. This book is for all students and scholars of Greek literature, whether in departments of Classics or English or Comparative Literature, as well as those concerned with the role of women in literature.
There’s history as it’s told, and then there’s history as it actually happened. You may think you know the stories behind the world’s most well-known, groundbreaking achievements, but To Her Credit is here to make you reevaluate our collective story as it has been written. This book celebrates the stories of women, from ancient times until the 1990s, whose contributions have been overwritten and, far too often, accredited to men. The pattern of female achievements being stolen, overwritten, or straight-up ignored is as old as time. Authors Kaitlin Culmo and Emily McDermott—with stunning art by Kezia Gabriella—reclaim the work of these deserving heroines and offer reminders of what we lose when we don’t question history as it has been written. We’re often told that Cervantes “invented fiction” with the novel Don Quixote in 17th century Europe, but what about Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji in 11th-century Japan? Elvis Presley is widely considered as “The King” and—for all intents and purposes—the inventor of rock and roll music. But what about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who was the first to engineer the rock and roll sound, or Big Mama Thornton, for whom the song “Hound Dog” was explicitly written? Albert Einstein is a household name and so too is his famed equation E = mc2. But what about his first wife, Mileva Marić, who not only helped with the Nobel Prize–winning discovery, but also collaborated with Albert throughout the pivotal early years of his career? This book tells the stories of women who have been left out of history’s accolades. It’s time to talk about the thousands of years’ worth of art, inventions, innovations, and world-changing achievements made by women that have been ascribed to men.
In Emily Mann’s highly theatrical adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s popular 1974 film Scenes from a Marriage, audiences are invited into an intimate stage space to collectively experience the human politics of a relationship, through all the stages of life—from youth to middle age to maturity. Mann’s adaptation illuminates the universal themes of love, identity, and vulnerability that are at the heart of Bergman’s timeless film, exposing how the universal is truly revealed through the specific.
Colorful illustrations and rhyming text introduces new vocabulary through the narrator's musings looking back on her childhood knowing that her creativity, unique ideas, and perseverance paired with the encouragement of her parents, friends, and teachers would help her reach her goals in life.
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