Medea’s continuing hold over spinners of tall tales from Euripides to Chaucer to Pasolini needs little explanation; she’s an archetype with everything going for her. As a fratricide and murderer of her own children, among assorted other acts of blood lust, her acts of brutality are so transgressive and symbolic that they offer themselves up to psychoanalytic deconstruction; as a woman abandoned and betrayed by Jason, for whom she has arguably risked everything, she presents herself neatly as a sacrifice thrown to the god of male ambition, arrogance and insecurity. But perhaps most enticing are the gaps and mismatches in the records and cover versions — disputed details that allowed, for example, Rachel Cusk to depict her Medea, brought to life in Rupert Goold’s stage version two years ago, as a mother in the throes of divorce who spares her children’s lives.
You’re unlikely to guess where David Vann stands on the story’s denouement during the course of his impressive recounting of Medea’s flight from Colchis — strewing her brother’s body parts in the sea behind her to be collected by their pursuing father — to Iolcus and Corinth — the scene of jilting Jason’s infidelity.
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