Medean figure and seventeenth-century plays. The latter are shaping "meditation [s] on the notion of catastrophe," and Cherbuliez shows that "our rehearsal of violence in tragedy is not just our interpretation of the past, but our relationship to the future" (176).The Medean observation of our relationship with violence leads to consideration of literature beyond territoriality in the epilogue, "The Cosmopolitics of Literature." The premodern Medean principle of violence "both ushers in the law as it founds the nationstate and yet indicates what can never be assimilated." Reminding us of the basic humanism of the often-derided cosmopolitans, Cherbuliez recalls that they are "persons whose allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings" (200). She questions the nature of this community and of the allegiance. For her, the answer lies with Medea, the "true cosmopolitan." She explains that "what makes her a cosmopolitan is precisely what makes her unassimilable in Greece: her conviction that the stuff of this world can do things others think it cannot: that is, her foreign knowledge, which we might call supernatural" (200). Cherbuliez's book is an enthralling discussion of violence and an essential read for our times. Both Medea and her book "help us face the structures of violence ungirdling our lives" (206).
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