Date:
Location:
Marie-Hélène Huet
M. Taylor Pyne Professor of French and Italian, Emeritus, Princeton University
It is no coincidence that both the story of Medusa dnt he theory that the maternal imagination could produce monstrouos progeny were debated with equal passion by eighteenth-century philosophers. This lecture proposes to reconsider the troubling history of Medusa's delivery and progeny through the multiple readins of the legend, focusing on authors who were the most anxious to celebrate reason and to dispose of myths during the Enlightenment.