Portraits of Medea in Portugal during the 20th and 21st Centuries

Book excerpt: The theme of Medea in Portuguese literature has mainly given rise to the writing of new plays on the subject. The central episode in the Portuguese rewritings in the last two centuries is the one that takes place in Corinth, i.e., the break between Medea and Jason, on the one hand, and Medea’s killing of their children in retaliation, on the other. Besides the complex play of feelings that provides this episode with very real human emotions, gender was a key issue in determining the interest that this story elicited in a society in search of social renovation, after profound political transformations – during the transition between dictatorship and democracy which happened in 1974 – that generated instability and established a requirement to find alternative rules of social intercourse in the path towards a new Portugal.