MEDEA - A MYTHICAL WOMAN IN A NON-MYTHICAL TIME

The article arises from the thesis by the theoretician Hans Blumberg about the "work of the myth" as the life of mythological narratives constantly evolving in art, which forms the basis of the analysis of the reception of the Medea myth by German women authors after World War II (A. Seghers, M. L. Kaschnitz, U. Haas, D. Loher, M. H. Novak, Ch. Wolf). The author shows the ways in which the Medea myth was brought up-to-date in concrete historical contexts. At the same time, it focuses on the gendering of each literary engagement with the myth and reveals how feminist criticism contributed to the understanding of individual sequences of the ancient narrative. The key issue is the question whether Medea can be accepted as a mythical figure also outside the Euripidean interpretation (Medea as the murderer of her own children).