Alabamian Argonautica: Myth and Classical Education in The Quest of the Silver Fleece

W. E. B. Du Bois’s novel The Quest of the Silver Fleece offers both a discussion of the value of classical education and an example of it. Du Bois organized the novel around the myth of Jason and Medea but transformed the main characters into newly educated African-Americans in the post-Reconstruction South. The African-American heroine of the novel, Zora, who performs the role of Medea within the literary context of Ethiopianism, benefits from her liberal education but provides new insights to the curriculum and applications of it. She personifies goals expressed by Du Bois in his treatise The Souls of Black Folk.