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A contribution to: Literature and Art

Edited by Elizabeth Benjamin and Sophie Corser

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 9

Modern Humanities Research Association

Artopen

Abstract.  The myth of the Medusa has always occupied a prominent position in thinking about art and its relation to life. Medusa’s petrifying power performs a shift from motion and mobility to rigidity and permanence: this passage resembles the process by which living images and thoughts are turned into artistic representations. Since Medusa cannot be seen directly, but only through her reflection – be it on Athena’s shield or in words – she poses questions of representation that are central to artistic production. This paper seeks to explore some of the theoretical implications of the Medusan myth in the context of the writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Walter Benjamin. My primary focus is Shelley’s poem ‘On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery’ (1819) and the Medusan themes running through Benjamin’s thought on literary criticism and on history. This paper grows out of a thesis that traces motifs and images that appear in the work of both writers in order to both reveal affinities between them and to investigate the significance of their writings in the formation of twentieth century literary theory. I am particularly interested in how the Medusan scenario turns into an image of critical self-reflection; one where the boundary between literary and critical representation is negotiated by means of a Medusan interchange of gazing and imagining, petrification and insightful reading. The paper is not in pursuit of proving or disproving a hypothesis nor in creating a coherent narrative. Instead it looks at a number of different facets of its title – Medusan Figures – to investigate the role that this myth can play in thinking and writing about literature from a theoretical point of view.

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