•Why it earns a slot
Grillparzer's Medea is the culminating part of his Golden Fleece trilogy and stands as the defining German-language treatment of the myth, notable for its psychological realism in portraying Medea not as a monster but as a woman systematically stripped of every identity until violence becomes her only remaining act of selfhood.
Grillparzer's Medea follows the exiled Colchian princess and her Greek husband Jason as they seek refuge in Corinth, where Jason abandons her for the king's daughter Kreusa. Stripped of her children, her magic, and every tie to her past, Medea sends Kreusa a poisoned gift that kills her and burns the palace, then kills her own children before departing alone to face divine judgment at Delphi.
This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.