Made Myth or Monster: Representations of African Women in Classic Dramatic Text

From Euripides’ Medea, to Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin to Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de teresias, representations of Africana women in classic pieces of European drama has contributed to the mythology and convention of the expectation of blackness for Black women that continues to haunt so many of us today. This paper examines and critiques one of Euripides’ most celebrated works Medea, and offers a historical perspective of the title character in that text that would set the tone and become a hallmark for writer’s, such as Zola and Apollinaire from the modernist period, as they continued to craft the convention of the Africana woman—from myth to monster, on the European stage.