Medea as Infanticidal Mother in the Late Eighteenth-Century Theatre

Abstract Schweitzer brings French and British texts in conjunction with translations of the classics. How can the infanticidal mother be accepted within an aesthetic of sensibility? As elsewhere, the constant dialogue with ancient sources, with Horace’s Ars Poetica and Seneca’s tragedy in particular, reveals the adjustments made to Medea in accordance with an early modern understanding of translation practice. Schweitzer unfolds the ambiguity of the translations: they censure violations of decorum, both in terms of sexual references and breaches of verisimilitude, while offering full disclosure in the footnotes. Further, Schweitzer argues that the elimination of violence on stage according to sentimental stage practice, in fact, draws paradoxically even sharper attention to the filicide of Medea and promotes a concomitant taste for suffering. In this way, the double-faced aspects of sensibility in general are explored with help of the figure of Medea.