Classical Culture

Deception and Trickery: Analytical Comparison of Penelope and Medea

Introduction to Characters

Penelope, the famous heroine from “Odyssey of Homer”, was the daughter of the king of Amykles Ikarian and Perivoias. Her name is still a symbol of faithfulness and devotion. In the context of ancient Greek drama Medea understood as the tragedy written by Euripides and taught in 431 BC. The project deifies the sense of tragedy, precisely this kind of theater, so that by now widely used term. The Jason betrayed his wife, Medea and the children of the marriage to take Glafki the daughter of the King of Corinth, Creon. And the Medea, to revenge sends poisonous gifts with which kills both the bride and the father in law, then after he slaughters her own children and Pheres Mermero, with infinite regret traitor husband, with the help of a chariot pulled by winged dragons, retiring in Athens.

This essay will analyze the two characters and compare their qualities and personalities to see how they are similar or dissimilar to each other.

Comparison between the Characters

A careful reading of Medea as a tragic poetry, reveals that this is a project that highlighted bold social reflection, a time when the classical Greek world is about to pass the civil grief and the phase of decline. At a time when criticism of traditional values ??are present in every institution, political and social, o Euripides challenges traditional cultural values ??associated with biological gender , the Greek character and the social institutions of the past. The clarity and purity probably the reason sometimes leads to the hasty conclusion that it probably is a true tragedy that causes intense feelings, but is simple in its structure.

Sometimes the tragedy and almost always in ancient comedy, the protagonist and defteragonistis face each other in a formal, rhetorical debate ...