The mythical figure of the Medusa has had a potent afterlife in twentieth-century critical theory from Freudian psychoanalysis to French feminism.1 In her classical literary reception, too, Roman authors struggle to come to terms with the power of her image. From Ovid in Metamorphoses 4, through Lucan in Bellum civile 9, to Statius in Thebaid 1, we can see the Latin epic poets treating Medusa’s gaze as a powerful image of the desiring female and wrestling with the threat it poses to masculine projects, both heroic and literary. In this study I argue that Ovid, Lucan, and Statius draw on a variety of androcentric rhetorical strategies to regain control of, and indeed annihilate, Medusa’s threatening power of commodification. Domestication of Medusa’s gaze in these poems is necessary, I suggest, to confirm both the epic hero’s martial valor and the epic poet’s literary authority. Ovid introduces Medusa in Metamorphoses 4 with the iconic image of her decapitated head (Met. 4.614–620):2

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帝国拉丁史诗中美杜莎的凝视：纪念 R. Elaine Fantham (1933–2016)

美杜莎的神话人物在 20 世纪从弗洛伊德精神分析到法国女权主义的批判理论中拥有强大的来世。1 在她的古典文学接受中，罗马作家也努力接受她形象的力量。从 Metamorphoses 4 中的 Ovid，到 Bellum Civile 9 中的 Lucan，到 Thebaid 1 中的 Statius，我们可以看到拉丁史诗诗人将美杜莎的凝视视为渴望女性的强大形象，并与它对男性项目构成的威胁进行斗争，既英雄和文学。在这项研究中，我认为奥维德、卢坎和斯塔提乌斯利用了各种男性中心主义的修辞策略来重新控制甚至消灭美杜莎的商品化威胁力量。我建议在这些诗中驯化美杜莎的凝视是必要的，既证实了史诗英雄的武功，又证实了史诗诗人的文学权威。奥维德在 Metamorphoses 4 中介绍了美杜莎，她的头部被斩首 (Met. 4.614–620):2