Medusa: In the Mirror of Time

(Hardback)

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Description

Medusa, literally, petrifies: her face turned the ancients to stone. For Perseus and his patriarchal culture she was a dangerous female monster that had to be destroyed; for Dante she was the erotic power that could destroy men; Freud saw in her hair a nest of terrifying penises signalling castration. Yet in our time Medusa's reputation has improved: feminists see her as a noble victim of patriarchy, and the designer Versace celebrates the lure of her mysterious face in a logo that stares at us from his ads for men's underwear, haute couture and exotic dinnerware. In our modern culture she is once again a powerplayer demanding to be recognized; Medusa, it seems, still has the power to transfix us. David Leeming's Medusa explores how and why the mythical figure of the gorgon has become one of the most important and enduring ideas in human history.

Reviews

"David Leeming peels layers from the myth and views his subject from a number of perspectives. The result is a complexity that affords us a far richer foundation upon which we can build our understanding of both the myth and ourselves."-- "New York Journal of Books"

Author Bio

David Leeming is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of numerous books on mythology, as well as an award-winning biography of James Baldwin.