Poetical representations of maternal filicide constitute the conceptual axis for the present study. I examine three playwrights which, even though separated in time, share the common interest for such a tragic matter. From this point of view, Euripides’ Medea (431 BC), Goethe’s Gretchentragödie (1790) and García Lorca’s Yerma (1934) stand out as plays in which the tragic meaning rests in the irony of having a child being murdered by the very same person who gave him life. Filicide, in these cases, works mostly as a meaningful metaphor for both the female body and women’s nature as tragic households of primordial conflicts: the sacred vs. reason, aesthetics vs. politics, literature vs. philosophy, intuition vs. concept. As such, this book offers a comparative reading of the aforementioned authors as well as the intellectual debate brought out by their tragedies, namely the discussions about the value of poetry and catharsis (Plato and Aristotle), the themes of sublime and will (Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer), and the contemporary reassessments of the tragic proposed by Nietzsche and Unamuno.
Author
Castro Filho, Claudio
Keywords
Medeia de Eurípides,
Gretchentragödie de Goethe,
Yerma de Lorca,
filicídio materno,
poéticas do trágico,
Euripides’ Medea,
Goethe’s Gretchentragödie,
García Lorca’s Yerma,
maternal filicide,
the poetics of tragedy
