Johnston goes on to say that as Medusa has been repeatedly compared to Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, she proves her merit as an icon, finding relevance even in modern politics. "[29] Cixous wants to destroy the phallogocentric system, and to empower women's bodies and language. "[15] In this perspective the "ravishingly beautiful" Medusa (see above) is the mother remembered in innocence; before the mythic truth of castration dawns on the subject. Definition of medusa. ", "The Timeless Myth of Medusa, a Rape Victim Turned Into a Monster", Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, Online version at Harvard University Press, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, "Medusa in Myth and Literary History" – English.uiuc.edu, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medusa&oldid=988535557, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 13 November 2020, at 19:40. The inclusion of Medusa in the center implies the protection of the goddess Athena, who wore the Gorgon's likeness on her aegis, as said above. [9] In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore during his short stay in Ethiopia where he saved and wed his future wife, the lovely princess Andromeda who was the most beautiful woman in the world at that time. Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about medusa. Stephen Wilk, author of Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, questioned Medusa's enduring status among the feminist movement. In an ode written in 490 BC Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".[5]. Athena’s) temple,[6] Athena punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into horrible snakes. She was usually represented as a winged female creature having a head of hair consisting of snakes; unlike the Gorgons, she was sometimes represented as very beautiful. These Foreign Words And Phrases Are Now Used In English. See Article History. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion. 'Nip it in the butt' or 'Nip it in the bud'? He plays with the concept by replacing Medusa's face with his own, as an indication of his immunity to her dreadful gaze. She claims "we must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing. [16], In the 20th century, feminists reassessed Medusa's appearances in literature and in modern culture, including the use of Medusa as a logo by fashion company Versace. The legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that "the Hellenes overran the goddess's chief shrines" and "stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks", the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane. She argues that men's retelling of the narrative turned Medusa into a monster because they feared female desire. The gods were well aware of this, and Perseus received help. She remained a priestess to Athena after her death and was risen with fresh hair. Author Sibylle Baumbach described Medusa as a “multimodal image of intoxication, petrifaction, and luring attractiveness," citing her seductive contemporary representation, as well as her dimensionality, as the reason for her longevity.[25]. Edward Burne-Jones' Perseus Cycle of paintings and a drawing by Aubrey Beardsley gave way to the twentieth century works of Paul Klee, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, Pierre et Gilles, and Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture The Gates of Hell.[36]. "Only the Gorgon has the savage, threatening appearance to serve as an immediately recognized symbol of rage and a protector of women's secrets," wrote Wilk. It was chosen because she represents beauty, art, and philosophy. A free-swimming sexual form of a coelenterate such as a jellyfish, typically having an umbrella-shaped body with stinging tentacles around the edge. [24], Even in contemporary pop culture, Medusa has become largely synonymous with feminine rage. In one interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the details of the myth. In most versions of the story, she was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus because Polydectes wanted to marry Perseus's mother. Its purpose was to act as a guardian for female power, keeping the book solely in the hands of women. According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, she lived and died on an island named Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene. Medusa has been featured in several works of fiction, including video games, movies, cartoons and books. Medusa was the only Gorgon who was mortal; hence her slayer, Perseus, was able to kill her by cutting off her head. The Gorgon/Medusa image has been rapidly adopted by large numbers of feminists who recognize her as one face of our own rage. The most influential depiction of Medusa in film is arguably the stop motion animation created by Ray Harryhausen for Clash of the Titans (1981). Archetypal literary criticism continues to find psychoanalysis useful. Mid 18th century named by association with Medusa. Volgens Hesiodus was Medusa die enigste van die Gorgone wat sterflik was. According to Ovid, in northwest Africa, Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone when he tried to attack him. The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were all children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys (or "Phorkys") and his sister Ceto (or "Keto"), chthonic monsters from an archaic world. In some species, medusae are a phase in the life cycle which alternates with a polypoid phase. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). Cixous calls writing "an act which will not only 'realize' the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal." Another example is the coat of arms of Dohalice village in the Czech Republic. Medusa (Grieks: Μέδουσα) was in die Griekse mitologie ’n Gorgo, ’n vroulike monster en een van drie susters. "And she's not deadly. Some classical references refer to three Gorgons; Harrison considered that the tripling of Medusa into a trio of sisters was a secondary feature in the myth: A number of early classics scholars interpreted the myth of Medusa as a quasi-historical – "based on or reconstructed from an event, custom, style, etc., in the past",[11] or "sublimated" memory of an actual invasion.[12][13]. The only mortal gorgon, whom Perseus killed by cutting off her head. Classic Medusa, in contrast, is an Oedipal/libidinous symptom. Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon."[8]. She's beautiful and she's laughing. Noted by Marjorie J. Milne in discussing a, WoRMS Editorial Board (2017). Municipal coat of arms of Dohalice village, Hradec Králové District, Czech Republic, Ceremonial French military uniform belt of World War I, Medusa is honored in the following scientific names:[37], The petrifying image of Medusa makes an instantly recognizable feature in popular culture. 14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1. "From Gorgon and Ceto, Sthenno, Euryale, Medusa". Medusa has been depicted in several works of art, including: Medusa remained a common theme in art in the nineteenth century, when her myth was retold in Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology. From Hades should send up an awful monster's grisly head. If a member of the audience describes your speech as. Numerous analyses have made us familiar with the occasion for this: it occurs when a boy, who has hitherto been unwilling to believe the threat of castration, catches sight of the female genitals, probably those of an adult, surrounded by hair, and essentially those of his mother. [17][18][19][20] The name "Medusa" itself is often used in ways not directly connected to the mythological figure but to suggest the gorgon's abilities or to connote malevolence; despite her origins as a beauty, the name in common usage "came to mean monster. "[22], In issue three, Fall 1986 for the magazine Woman of Power an article called Gorgons: A Face for Contemporary Women's Rage, appeared, written by Emily Erwin Culpepper, who wrote that "The Amazon Gorgon face is female fury personified. The terror of Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. Perseus then flew to Seriphos, where his mother was being forced into marriage with the king, Polydectes, who was turned into stone by the head. What made you want to look up medusa? [32][33] In this interpretation of Medusa, attempts to avoid looking into her eyes represent avoiding the ostensibly depressing reality that the universe is meaningless. Does English Have More Words Than Any Other Language? [23], Elana Dykewomon's 1976 collection of lesbian stories and poems, They Will Know Me by My Teeth, features a drawing of a Gorgon on its cover. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Through many of her iterations, Medusa pushes back against a story that seeks to place the male, Perseus, at its center, blameless and heroic. 2 plural medusae\ mi- ˈdü- ˌsē. In Greek mythology, Medusa (/mɪˈdjuːzə, -sə/; Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress")[1] also called Gorgo, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. With snakes for hair—hatred of mortal man—, While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as having monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as being beautiful as well as terrifying. Those who gazed into her eyes would turn to stone. Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto,[2] although the author Hyginus makes her the daughter of Gorgon and Ceto.[3]. Here Are Our Top English Tips, The Best Articles To Improve Your English Language Usage, The Most Common English Language Questions, one can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. In 1940, Sigmund Freud's "Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head)" was published posthumously. "[22], Medusa's visage has since been adopted by many women as a symbol of female rage; one of the first publications to express this idea was a feminist journal called Women: A Journal of Liberation in their issue one, volume six for 1978. “Medusa.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medusa. How to use a word that (literally) drives some pe... Do you know what languages these words come from? There are no recorded instances of Medusa turning a woman to stone. [citation needed]. Then Perseus gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis.[10]. "[31], Medusa has sometimes appeared as representing notions of scientific determinism and nihilism, especially in contrast with romantic idealism. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. "[22] Griselda Pollock analyses the passage from horrorism to compassion in the figure of the Medusa through Adriana Cavarero's philosophy and Bracha Ettinger's art and Matrixial theory. In particular, the designer Versace's symbol is reflected through the Medusa-head symbol. 1Zoology A free-swimming sexual form of a coelenterate such as a jellyfish, typically having an umbrella-shaped body with stinging tentacles around the edge. (Pythian Ode 12). The cover featured the image of the Gorgon Medusa by Froggi Lupton, which the editors on the inside cover explained "can be a map to guide us through our terrors, through the depths of our anger into the sources of our power as women. ‘Cnidarians have two basic body forms, medusa and polyp.’. Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood. Through the lens of theology, film, art, and feminist literature, my students and I map how her meaning has shifted over time and across cultures. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of a neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream: registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet unknown or misconstrued by the conscious mind. Send us feedback. Available from. [30] "You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her," writes Cixous. Medusa, in Greek mythology, the most famous of the monster figures known as Gorgons. Inscribe the breath of the whole woman. "Medusa has since haunted Western imagination, materializing whenever male authority feels threatened by female agency," writes Johnston. Jack London uses Medusa in this way in his novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore:[34]. How to pronounce medusae (audio) "The Laugh of the Medusa" is largely a call to arms, urging women to reclaim their identity through writing as she rejects the patriarchal society of Western culture. Not that we're looking to start something. It is in the Roman poet Ovid ’s Metamorphoses that her story is … One example is that of the flag and emblem of Sicily, together with the three legged trinacria. Two versions of Medusa were created by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – one in 1596 and the other in 1597 – depicting the exact moment she was executed by Perseus. The blood of Medusa also spawned the Amphisbaena (a horned dragon-like creature with a snake-headed tail).
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