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In The Wake Of Medea: Neoclassical Theater And The Arts Of Destruction [Table Of Contents], Juliette Cherbuliez

Literature

In the Wake of Medea examines the violence of seventeenth-century French political dramas. French tragedy usually appears as a passionless, cerebral genre that refused all forms of violence. In the Wake explores the rhetorical, literary, and performance strategies through which violence persisted. The mythological figure of Medea, foreigner who massacres her brother, murders kings, burns down Corinth, and kills her own children, can serve as a paradigm for this violence. Paradigmatic also of the refugee who is welcomed yet feared, who confirms our concept of the social while threatening its integrity, Medea’s presence is this book’s organizing principle. An alternative …