Beheading the Gorgon: Myth, Symbolism and Appropriation

Abstract

Medusae Jellyfish were named as such by Linnaeus because of their intriguing similarity to a particular monster of classical mythology, Medusa (also known as the Gorgon). Medusa’s disembodied head with hissing snakes for hair, together with a deadly gaze that could literally petrify, made her the most horrible of mythological monsters. This chapter explores how Medusa came to be beheaded, and what this episode has signified both in antiquity and subsequently, where it has had an afterlife as among the most powerful and contested of mythological symbols. We consider how the ancient myth might have come about, what it meant to the ancients, what its value is as a symbol and how and why it has such a rich tradition of appropriation by particular users, each of whom creates a new beheading myth while engaging with various earlier adaptations.