ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a reading of 'written clothes' in the Medea dramas by Euripides and Franz Grillparzer. It focuses on Medea's clothes with regard to what can be called, with Barthes, their 'signification', their function as carriers of meaning. The chapter argues that Medea's subversive potential both in Euripides' and in Grillparzer's adaptation of the myth can be revealed in her interaction with clothes. Euripides' Medea has established itself as the most canonical version of the myth, providing inspiration for artists throughout the centuries and shaping the extensive reception of the Medea myth in literature and art. Medea is marked as the antithetical 'Other' to the Greek 'Self' on several levels: her non-Greek ethnicity distances her geographically, culturally, politically and socially. Medea's clothing provides a tool to connect, compare and contrast the dramas of Euripides and Grillparzer that are separated by twenty-two and a half centuries.
