LILITH AND MEDEIA: WOMEN'S NIGHTMARE OF THE PATRIARCAL SOCIETY
Archetype. Medea. Lilith. Luz del Fuego. Mythology.
This research aims to compare the works The Alphabet of Ben Sira and Medea, by Euripides, elucidating the nightmare-woman archetype of patriarchal civilization in literature. This nightmare-woman archetype carries several characteristics, which can be cruel, lustful, infanticidal and even divine. That said, we can analyze the mythological narratives by identifying the profiles of the transgressing woman of the patriarchy, while it is contrasted and reaffirmed in the body and life of the historical character Dora Vivacqua, in the skin of Luz del Fuego described in the work Luz del Fuego: The people's dancer (1994). Arranged in three chapters, the text has comparative perspectives based on the theoretical discussions of Gerda Lerner (2019), Monique Wittig (2006), Rosie Marie Muraro (1997), Pierre Bourdieu (2012) and Jean Delumeau (2001) to understand the history of the patriarchal system, its mechanisms, tools and discourses. Regarding the theory of mythologies, we have Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers (1990), Martha Robles (2006) Robert Graves and Raphael Patai (2018), among others. Through the theories that are interweave in literary narratives, it is clear that literature speaks of the society where it takes shape; it can be both descriptive and prescriptive. Thus, we understand that women mythological like Medea and Lilith, and real like Luz del Fuego, walk both ways, as the literature describes them because they existed – even if it is in the form of a myth – and prescribes them so that they do not re-exist, due to antagonism that they provoke, oscillating between fascination and dread.