- Hardcover: 186 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group (April 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385490607
- ISBN-13: 978-0385490603
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 15.2 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,250,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Medea is among the most notorious women in the canon of Greek tragedy: a woman scorned who sacrifices her own children to her jealous rage. In her gripping new novel, Christa Wolf explodes this myth, revealing a fiercely independent woman ensnared in a brutal political battle.
Medea, driven by her conscience to leave her corrupt homeland, arrives in Corinth with her husband, the hero Jason. He is welcomed, but she is branded the outsider-and then she discovers the appalling secret behind the king's claim to power. Unwilling to ignore the horrifying truth about the state, she becomes a threat to the king and his ruthless advisors; abandoned by Jason and made a public scapegoat, she is reviled as a witch and a murderess.
Long a sharp-eyed political observer, Christa Wolf transforms this ancient tale into a startlingly relevant commentary on our times. Possessed of the enduring truths so treasured in the classics, and yet with a thoroughly contemporary spin, her Medea is a stunningly perceptive and probingly honest work of fiction.
With an Introduction by Margaret Atwood. Translated from the German by John Cullen.
Medea, driven by her conscience to leave her corrupt homeland, arrives in Corinth with her husband, the hero Jason. He is welcomed, but she is branded the outsider-and then she discovers the appalling secret behind the king's claim to power. Unwilling to ignore the horrifying truth about the state, she becomes a threat to the king and his ruthless advisors; abandoned by Jason and made a public scapegoat, she is reviled as a witch and a murderess.
Long a sharp-eyed political observer, Christa Wolf transforms this ancient tale into a startlingly relevant commentary on our times. Possessed of the enduring truths so treasured in the classics, and yet with a thoroughly contemporary spin, her Medea is a stunningly perceptive and probingly honest work of fiction.
With an Introduction by Margaret Atwood. Translated from the German by John Cullen.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Medea is one of the great "baddies" of classical literature. The exotic foreign witch who murders her own brother and her own children, she also assassinates a beautiful Corinthian princess by poison dress, all because of a lustful obssession with that Thessalian fool Jason. It is a macabre piece of classic myth which helped to demonstrate an important moral message to the cultural heirs of ancient Greece throughout the centuries: never mess with foreign girls.
The crimes of Medea are, of course, extremely convenient for the patriarchal tradition. She is supposed to be an inferior - a foreigner, a Colchian barbarian, AND a woman - yet she exercises far better intellect and enterprise than her partner, the shallow, superficial Jason. Her feminine authority, her religion and exotic culture, poses a subversive and intolerable threat to the Corinthian state.
Christa Wolf's reconstruction of the social and political pressures on the couple's life in exile in Corinth is extremely convincing. Wolf's Medea is not an unbridled jealous daemon driven by raw sexual passion, she is a real person confined by the context and circumstance in which she lives - an unloved exile from a 'primitive' culture in a corrupt and hostile country - and therefore she is plausibly portrayed as an innocent victim of events that happen beyond her control.
The novel is a wonderful study of the operations of power in society. It perfectly portrays that certain someone in public life who knows a little too much for their own good and is a little too dangerous to be allowed to exist. It is a perfectly judged tragedy which becomes utterly compelling as enemies' whispering campaigns becomes full blown character assassination - when spies and lies and popular opinion combine to bring about her downfall - all of which has a timeless relevance to the politics of today and of modern history.
It is also a beautifully written book, the emotional worlds of the characters are vividly portrayed and certain sentiments are expressed so touchingly that passages are quotable - and it's actually a translation from German!! This is a fantastic book which truly deserves much wider readership.
The crimes of Medea are, of course, extremely convenient for the patriarchal tradition. She is supposed to be an inferior - a foreigner, a Colchian barbarian, AND a woman - yet she exercises far better intellect and enterprise than her partner, the shallow, superficial Jason. Her feminine authority, her religion and exotic culture, poses a subversive and intolerable threat to the Corinthian state.
Christa Wolf's reconstruction of the social and political pressures on the couple's life in exile in Corinth is extremely convincing. Wolf's Medea is not an unbridled jealous daemon driven by raw sexual passion, she is a real person confined by the context and circumstance in which she lives - an unloved exile from a 'primitive' culture in a corrupt and hostile country - and therefore she is plausibly portrayed as an innocent victim of events that happen beyond her control.
The novel is a wonderful study of the operations of power in society. It perfectly portrays that certain someone in public life who knows a little too much for their own good and is a little too dangerous to be allowed to exist. It is a perfectly judged tragedy which becomes utterly compelling as enemies' whispering campaigns becomes full blown character assassination - when spies and lies and popular opinion combine to bring about her downfall - all of which has a timeless relevance to the politics of today and of modern history.
It is also a beautifully written book, the emotional worlds of the characters are vividly portrayed and certain sentiments are expressed so touchingly that passages are quotable - and it's actually a translation from German!! This is a fantastic book which truly deserves much wider readership.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A Welcomed and Gratifying Reinterpretation of Myth
12 July 1999
Format:Hardcover
Ever since James Frazer and Joseph Campbell, but moreso Robert Graves, I've been waiting for the 'real' story of mythological characters like Hera, say, or the Medusa; Crista Wolf's "Cassandra" and now "Medea" take me happily in that direction. I know Ms Wolf has a personal and political agenda. Admittedly, I had trouble getting started, largely because of similarities of voice in the early chapters, but once the plot begins I had no trouble following it and Medea herself down it's dark labyrinths. And I felt thoroughly gratified with her and at her sentiments at the end. Who hasn't reached that point, where the only gesture meaningful and appropriate is a raised middle digit--figuaratively speaking, of course? And who more than Medea has better cause? Except maybe the Medusa. What about it Ms Wolf?
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Definitely first class story telling
12 Nov 2000
Format:Hardcover
How can anyone call this novel flat, I cannot understand. In less than 200 pages, Wolf has brilliantly captured the utter depravity than mankind can sink to through its own bigotry, hypocrisy, lying, selfishness and sense of self-preservation. Wolf has taken Darwin's survival of the fittest theory to its immoral extreme and has exploited the Lacanian objet art to its most devastating use. A society so enveloped in its own sense of emptiness and vileness, leading them to sacrifice a woman as an expiation of its evil, can only be beautifully and tragically rendered by a mistress story teller as Wolf. Atwood's introduction tells no lies, and I highly recommend this reading to anyone who is into the classics, contemporary culture, social studies and philosophy. This is Wolf's first novel that I have read and it most definitely will not be the last.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Beautiful Retelling of a Powerful Tale
3 Dec 2001
Format:Hardcover
As a devout fan of the Medea story, I was a little doubtful as I opened the book. At first, the heightened language struck me as being counterproductive to the humanity that Wolfe seemed to strive for in the protagonist, but, as the story progressed, I found myself lured in by the characters, the basic approach, and the added details. I thought the chapter by Princess Glauce, a character often avoided or even mistreated in many versions, was particularly insightful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves this tale or interpretive approaches to traditional mythology.
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