The Medusa Reader

Fascinating and terrifying, the Medusa story has inspired writers and artists, anthropologists and psychoanalysts, political theorists, and poets.The Medusa Readertraces her through the ages--from classical myth through the Renaissance to our present-day concerns with psychoanalysis, pop culture, art, and fashion. This anthology brings together for the first time in one place the essential literary and philosophical passages as well as critical writing on Medusa. From Homer, Hesiod, and Euripides to Ovid, Lucan, and Fulgentius, from Dante, Petrarch, and Christine de Pizan to Vasari, Harington, and Bacon, from Goethe and Shelley to Nietzsche and Freud, from Walter Benjamin and Jean-Paul Sartre to Sylvia Plath and Jacques Derrida, Neil Hertz and Gianni Versace, Western culture has never flinched from Medusa's powerful gaze. With its broad range of materials,The Medusa Readerbrings center-stage one of Western culture's most powerful and resonant myths.

Majorie Garber is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English at Harvard, where she is also Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and Director of the Humanities Center. Her ninth and most recent book is Quotation Marks, also published by Routledge. Nancy J. Vickers is President of Bryn Mawr College, where she is also Professor of Italian, French, and Comparative Literature. She has published widely in the fields of literary and cultural studies, with particular interests in Dante, Renaissance poetry, and the technologies of lyric production.