Medea's Otherness Analysis

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The Greek ideology saw the depiction of otherness in Medea’s convoluted and outlandish character as a threat. Medea’s foreign and suspicious individuality is accentuated from the beginning in the nurse’s opening lines, “Where, coming as an exile, she has earned/The citizens’ welcome;”. The Greeks viewed Medea’s otherness as the the exotic, the mysterious and the feared. This was due to their bigoted scrutiny of the incertitude foreigners may bring, therefore challenging their ‘rational’ system. Only an insider could be a civilian of Greece, thus, the foundation of identity, ontologically assuming the outsider, was essentially premised on ethnicity.

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