Euripedes Essay

The beginnings of literature ar sowed in myths. They reflect the preoccupations of the myths celebrate the primal human emotions like get it on, hate, inner desires, reproduction and heroism, almost others are equally horrendous dealing with some heinous crimes like murder and rape. No matter what aspect of demeanor do they reflect it is their universality that makes them universal in diametrical cultures and generation? The myth of Inos is such an example. The falsehood of Inos dates approve many centuries before deliveryman to ancient Rome and Greece.According to the romance, Inos, the daughter of Cadmus is married by Athama, tycoon of pre historic Minyans in the ancient Boeotian urban center of Orchomenus. King Athama falls in love with the innocent beauty of Inos and neglects his own wife, Nephele, who disappears in anger. They dedicate ii sons, Laerchus and Melicertes . Inos also nurses Dionysus, thus incurs the wrath of Hera, the wife of Zeus. Inos is later co ntrol mad and in her madness kills herself and her two sons. She is later worshipped by ancient Greeks as Leucothea, the White Goddess.The fabrication of Inos is found in different unwraps of world with slight variations. Euripides one of the great giants of Greek disaster was perhaps the first who apply 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 much popularly known as the legend of Medea. While in love with Jason, Euripides Medea helps him steal the golden fleece from her father, King Aeechis of Colchis. Thus, betraying her own clan. She is later decrepit 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 flying lizard chariot. She takes refuge with king Aegeus of Athens. She later marries Achilles in the underworld and becomes immortal. Medea therefore, be comes 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 grammatical gender prejudices working on the individual lives of the characters. The employment of these phenomena in the evolution and corruption of the characters, makes the legend universal in its appeal.It is for this reason that even in the twentyfirst century, writers bodied the myth in the modern characters as in Wide sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Set between the characters of the Carribean and England, Wide gulfweed Sea emphsise the above mentioned phenomena working on its individual characters. The novel is compose in the post modern post colonial settings. Immediately afterwards the emancipation of the Carribean blacks. It narrates the falsehood 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 relationship that de rives preadolescent and innocent 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 pop outline, however, the real 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 helplessness as a woman is exposed when exploited by her husband. She, however, comes out as a resolute and vindictive person. She is portrayed as sanitary 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 doomed to her madness by the mixer as well as biological factors. The novel seems more of an approac h that how the social factors catalyses the biological deseases. Her death, however, gives her the same triumph 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 by her death. Just as Medea escapes unpunished in a dragon chariot before her husbands eyes. It is interesting to note that how a twentyfirst century african woman writer incorporates the same myth used by the Greek tragedian of fifth century Before Christ. A deeper field 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 papist 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 Senec a might have brought the passe-partout legend of Inos to Spain thorugh his own intellectual influence. However, the inscriptions on the stones at Maikop, 56 miles eastside 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 amazing discovery, that the whole legend or some parts of the legend might be true. The pheonicians of the twelfth to 8th centuries before Christ, then present at colchis a arena of the Western Georgian Socialist Soviet Republics, are supposed to fare 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, some other of the celebrated Af ro- American writer draws a like wise foreshadow of a phantom in her novel Beloved. In whatsoever version the legend of Medea appear, it projects very effectively the apparent triumph of the antheral sex over female, whereas, it is the weaker sex that despise the yolk of her stronger counter part and sets themselves free in the eventual(prenominal) 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.