Vom Anfang und Ende des Mythos. Medea bei Christa Wolf und Dea Loher

Abstract

Literary texts treating mythological subjects fulfi l a myth-making function, as Horkheimer/Adorno and Blumenberg have shown in their theories of myth. As it deals with mythological pretexts, literature acts mythopoetically. This implies a self-refl exive criticism of myths. In view of its overwhelming number of literary adaptations throughout cultural history, the myth of Medea can be seen as a literary “work on myth.” On the basis of Christa Wolf’s novel Medea. Stimmen on the one hand and Dea Loher’s play Manhattan Medea on the other, the paper analyzes the mythopoetic dimension of literature with the goal of exhibiting the critical tendencies in the examined texts, and showing at the same time their decisive differences. In Wolf’s novel, myth returns to its beginnings in such a way that its problematic creative processes are expounded. Furthermore, critical refl ections on myth are developed by processes of a collective memory which become relevant for the production of myths. In doing so, the novel clearly refers to the current debate on literature as a ‘storage’ of a collective memory. The paper concludes that Dea Loher’s Manhattan Medea radicalizes the criticism of myth that is present in Wolf’s novel: Loher’s play questions the literary work on myth. Thus Loher denies the myth’s innovative potential and brings the Medea myth to a preliminary end. (SC; in German)