Word: jasone
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...poem is not actually poetry at all. In the deep recesses of the classical unrhymed hexameter narrative lurks the novelist's imagination, concerned more with mechanics than pure, precise wordsway. John Gardner cannot deny his place in the traditional world of Henry James and the Novel of Ideas. Jason and Medeia affirms that fact once more...
...deft control of the cumbersome epic. Take, for example, his handling of the narrative point of view, his own relationship as writer to his story. The first person narrator is cast into an epic-dream, brought to Corinth by the gods to record for posterity the sad details of Jason's split from Medeia. While this anonymous poet is only a neutral observer, he tries desperately to alter the course of events by reconciling the couple. Only Medeia can see him, and she thinks he's a devil. Gardner's helpless narrator is the hilarious antithesis to the traditional omniscient...
...Jason is no longer the young, virile hero, wandering aimlessly through the Hellenic world so absolutely self-confident. He is a king without a country, a thinker with no outlet for his ideals. His cold, calculating mind obliterates any feelings he might have for Medeia or his two children. Pride and vanity urge him to gain Corinth. Jason has already won Pyripta's hand as Euripides's Medeia begins. But the greatest beauty of Jason and Medeia lies in its concentration on the imaginatively conceived contest for the princess of Corinth (an event which never occurred in ancient versions...
...first, Jason is unsure whether he wants to leave Medeia. But as he is prompted by Kreon to tell his tale of the Argonauts, he starts off on a new voyage into his own psyche, distorting the original story to fit his purposes. Kreon best describes Jason's inward journey...
...Jason weaves his story of the separate episodes of the Argo's voyage into dark-webbed allegories of faithlessness and the absurdity of existence. His final conclusion is not terribly unpredictable...