Ketevan Barbakadze; Tamar Gogoladze

doi:10.36074/grail-of-science.21.08.2026.024

THE DISCOURSE OF THE MEDEA MYTH IN THE MODERN NOVEL

Authors

Ketevan Barbakadze Gori State University, Gori, Georgia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8706-2102
Tamar Gogoladze Gori State University, Gori, Georgia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0450-2924

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36074/grail-of-science.21.08.2026.024

Keywords:

Medea, Jason, Euripides, Corinthians, Colchis

Summary

From the 8th century BC to the present day (from Eumelos of Corinth), the myth of Medea of Colchis has occupied an important place in ancient Greek and later Roman literature. The presentation of Medea's "Helladic adventure", "Colchian theme" is being created, and from the classicist Pierre Corneille's "Medea" (18th century), its scientific study is also underway. Plays on Medea's themes are staged on the stage of the Paris Theater, with the participation of the famous Italian actress Adelaide Ristori (in Legouve's "Medea") in French and Italian, and in the 20th century, with Romanian actress Agatha Bârsescu performing in a play of the same name, a colored postage stamp was printed in 1983. This is how we get to the 1990s, when the German writer Christa Wolf (1929-2011) publishes the anagenetic mythological novel "Medea. Voices" (1996). Researchers cite the reason for the popularity of the Medea myth as the reflection of the theme of "love and family relations" in this myth, but in both Hellenic and Roman literature it is inextricably linked with the theme of the Argonauts, who later took part in the Trojan War and figure in both of Homer's poems, which are called masterpieces of world literature. In addition, in the modern novel, the author tried to expand the old theme so that in the chapter told by the main character Medea, she showed the arbitrary sacrifice of the children of Medea and Jason (who were hidden in the temple of Artemis by the woman rejected by her husband) by the inhabitants of Corinth in response to the rejection of the foreign woman, thus K. Wolf develops a narrative different from Euripides' version of the fate of Medea's children. By introducing Corinthian and Colchian people created by the writer's imagination, in addition to real characters (i.e., those mentioned in the myth) from centuries past, the writer revives the myth and, through this anagenesis, makes the novel interesting reading for modern readers. This is the purpose of this article.