Seneca's 'Medea' and the tragic self.

摘要

The dissertation addresses four aspects of Seneca's Medea character: her gender performance, her divinity, her foreignness, and her relationship to the past. From an analysis of these four facets of her identity, the dissertation argues that Seneca's Medea character is forced to define her identity in isolation, without the sounding board of social interaction. Through a close reading of the final monologue, the dissertation concludes that Medea fails in her attempt to construct a robust self which can take ownership of its actions in the present and maintain itself without social recognition. The epilogue postulates that Medea's character ultimately displays the limitations both of identity in isolation and of a performance-based self.