Screaming Silence: Medusa and the Enlightening Darkness of Ancient Texts and Modern Science
Screaming Silence: Medusa and the Enlightening Darkness of Ancient Texts and Modern Science
Author(s): Estella CiobanuSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature
Published by: Ovidius University Press
Keywords: Medusa; Perseus; The Temple of My Familiar (Alice Walker); Greek/Roman mythology; Homer; Hesiod; Pindar; Herodotus; Diodorus Siculus; (Pseudo- )Apollodorus; Pausanias; Ovid; Fulgentius;
Summary/Abstract: A controversial episode from Alice Walker’s novel The Temple of MyFamiliar (1990) – about ancient Greek cultural colonisation of Africa – suggests that theGreeks’ Medusa may be more than meets the eye or ear. This paper investigates the Medusamyth enshrined in ancient Graeco-Roman texts and its resurfacing in eighteenth-centurybiological taxonomy, with a view to identifying telling silences, if any, in the patriarchalconstrual of Medusa as woman/monster. I use a broad feminist approach to examine the engendering of the silence–speech continuum, for whose conceptualisation I draw hereespecially upon Hélène Cixous and Teresa de Lauretis. My concern is not so much whether,as claimed by diverse contemporary feminists, Medusa can be used as a potentempowerment figure for women, but rather what her silencing indicates about thepatriarchal epistemic project.
Journal: Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa. Seria Filologie
- Issue Year: XXX/2019
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 16-36
- Page Count: 21
- Language: English
