The Role of Chorus in Euripides Medea Essay -- Euripides Medea Essays

The Role of Chorus in Medea   In section 18 of the Poetics Aristotle criticizes Euripides for not allowing the chorus to be one of the actors and to be a part of the whole and to shargon in the dramatic action, . . . as in Sophocles. Aristotle may be thinking of the embolima of Euripides later plays (satirized also by Aristophanes), besides he is certainly wrong about the Medea. Its choral odes are not only all intimately related to the action but are also essential for the meaning of the play, particularly because here, as elsewhere (e.g. Hecuba), Euripides forces us reevaluate his main protagonist in midstream and uses the chorus (in part) to paint a picture that change.   In her first speech Medea wins over the chorus by a plea to solidarity in the face of womens victimization by a male-dominated society, and this result by the chorus is an essential step in the poets paradoxical tax of winning sympathy and understanding for a mother who kills her children. But as th at first speech itself indicates, Medea both is and is not a typical (Greek) womanhood she is a foreig...