Fascinating and terrifying, the Medusa story has inspired writers and artists, anthropologists and psychoanalysts, political theorists, and poets. "The Medusa Reader" traces her through the ages--from classical myth through the Renaissance to our present-day concerns with psychoanalysis, pop culture, art, and fashion. This anthology brings together for the first time in one place the essential literary and philosophical passages as well as critical writing on Medusa. From Homer, Hesiod, and Euripides to Ovid, Lucan, and Fulgentius, from Dante, Petrarch, and Christine de Pizan to Vasari, Harington, and Bacon, from Goethe and Shelley to Nietzsche and Freud, from Walter Benjamin and Jean-Paul Sartre to Sylvia Plath and Jacques Derrida, Neil Hertz and Gianni Versace, Western culture has never flinched from Medusa's powerful gaze. With its broad range of materials, "The Medusa Reader" brings center-stage one of Western culture's most powerful and resonant myths.