Abstract

ii The analysis of literature using evolutionary literary theory now has a scholarly record of two decades. While several archaic and classical Greek works have been interpreted with insightful and productive results using a biopoetic critical method, Classical scholars have not yet to any degree taken up the approach. This thesis aims to establish whether the characterization of Medeia in three Greek texts involving three different literary genres, Pindar’s Fourth Pythian ode, Euripides ’ tragedy Medeia, and Apollonios ’ epic the Argonautika, follows that predicted by the findings of evolutionary psychology. Excerpts from the texts are compared against the relevant findings of evolutionary psychology influencing the construction and reception of narrative character and action, and considered in relation to a number of biologically and psychologically informed motivations and behaviours from among those posited by evolutionary psychologists. These include: mating strategies, attractiveness, marriage, sexuality, romantic love, jealousy, parental investment, kin relationships, infanticide, and the factors predetermining filicide- mental