Medea as Tragic Hero: Euripides and Aristotle's Poetics
This essay examines Euripides' Medea through the lens of Aristotle's Poetics, evaluating how closely the play conforms to the classical pattern of the tragic hero. The paper analyzes Aristotle's "unities" of time, place, and action; the plot elements of recognition (anagnoresis) and reversal of fortune (peripeteia); and the four rules of character outlined in Poetics Chapter XV. The essay argues that Euripides deliberately violates certain rules — most notably through the deus ex machina ending — in order to emphasize Medea's status as a woman, a foreigner, and a witch, transforming her into a figure that exceeds the traditional tragic protagonist while still largely observing the Aristotelian framework.
- Introduction: Aristotle and the Tragic Hero: Introduces Aristotle's Poetics and the paper's thesis
- The Unities of Time, Place, and Action: Medea's conformity to Aristotle's three unities
- Recognition and Reversal of Fortune in Medea: Anagnoresis and peripeteia in Euripides' plot
- The Four Rules of Character: Medea measured against Aristotle's character rules
- Deliberate Violations and the Deus ex Machina: Aristotle's own critique of Medea's ending
- Conclusion: Euripides and the Aristotelian Pattern: Gender, otherness, and deliberate rule-breaking
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What makes this paper effective
- It grounds every analytical claim directly in primary source quotations from both Aristotle's Poetics and Euripides' Medea, allowing the textual evidence to drive the argument rather than mere assertion.
- The essay maintains a clear organizational logic, moving through Aristotle's rules systematically — unities, plot elements, then character rules — before synthesizing where Euripides conforms and where he deliberately diverges.
- The paper advances a nuanced thesis: Euripides observes more rules than he breaks, and the violations are purposeful rather than accidental, which gives the argument interpretive depth beyond a simple checklist comparison.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper exemplifies close comparative textual analysis. The writer juxtaposes a theoretical framework (Aristotle's Poetics) against a literary work (Euripides' Medea), using direct quotations from both sources as evidence at each analytical step. Crucially, the paper also exploits the moment where Aristotle himself cites Medea as a violation — turning the primary theoretical source into evidence for the argument about deliberate rule-breaking.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with the thesis that Euripides observes more Aristotelian rules than he violates. It then proceeds rule-by-rule through the Poetics: the three unities (Chapter V), plot mechanics of anagnoresis and peripeteia (Chapter IX), and the four character specifications (Chapter XV). The final body section synthesizes the violations — particularly the deus ex machina ending — and interprets them as intentional artistic choices related to gender and otherness. A brief conclusion restates the thesis.
Introduction: Aristotle and the Tragic Hero
The pattern of the tragic hero was first defined by Aristotle. His work The Poetics discusses the art of Greek tragedy and defines the rules for a tragic protagonist. By examining these rules alongside the Medea of Euripides, we can see how Euripides observes or breaks the classic pattern. The argument here is that Euripides observes more rules than he violates, the better to emphasize those aspects in which he differs from the Aristotelian norm.
The Unities of Time, Place, and Action
The first part of the pattern of a tragic hero is discussed by Aristotle in Poetics Chapter V. Here, Aristotle defines what would come to be known as "the unities":
"They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavors, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no limits of time." (Poetics V)
This means that a Greek tragedy will always have — or should have — the same basic structure: the play has a "unity" of time, because it all takes place within Aristotle's "single revolution of the sun." The tragedy additionally features a unity of place (i.e., there is only one set) and a unity of action (i.e., there is only one plot).
The Medea of Euripides observes all three of these unities: the whole tragedy takes place in a single day, in one location outside Medea's house in Corinth, and it tells the story of Medea's revenge on Jason for deserting her. Even though Medea is not the first character to appear or speak, the Nurse's opening speech presents Medea to us by way of introduction:
"…While Medea, his hapless wife, thus scorned, appeals to the oaths he swore, recalls the strong pledge his right hand gave, and bids heaven be witness what requital she is finding from Jason. And here she lies fasting, yielding her body to her grief, wasting away in tears ever since she learnt that she was wronged by her husband, never lifting her eye nor raising her face from off the ground."
This immediate initial introduction establishes Medea as the Aristotelian tragic protagonist.
Works Cited
Aristotle. The Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher. Internet Classics Archive. Accessed 15 April 2011. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html
Euripides. Medea. Translated by E. P. Coleridge. Internet Classics Archive. Accessed 15 April 2011. http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/medea.html
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