Medusa: Ekphrasis and Iconography in The Faerie Queene

Medusa: Ekphrasis and Iconography in The Faerie Queene
Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, an enigmatic poem prone to subjective interpretations,
remains almost impenetrable to objective scrutiny, because Spenser creates readerly dissonance
by pursuing multiple objectives in the poem. He visualizes his text as both a morally instructive
tool to “fashion a gentleman” and as an intensely personal “dark conceit,”1 and the schism in
Spenser’s intent creates considerable narrative and interpretive flux. Renowned as a pictorial
poet,2 Spenser includes rich visual imagery in the poem, regularly challenging the explicit
narrative content. In essence, textual conflict unfolds as Spenser shows readers what he cannot
tell them through the exploration of subthemes and creation of microtexts, complicating every
book of The Faerie Queene. For example, Spenser most often inserts the Medusa symbol into
the text using ekphrastic techniques to create powerful visual images “pregnant”3 with meaning.
J. W. T. Mitchell calls Medusa, “the perfect prototype for the dangerous female Other who
threatens to silence the male voice and fixate his observing eye.” 4 Spencer’s use of complex
ekphrastic imagery signals the reader to the iconographical significance of his symbol, in this
case Medusa.
The Medusa imagery emerges most potently in two instances in the poem; as Britomart
becomes Medusa while viewing Amoret’s torture and when Britomart decapitates Radigund.
Indeed, Medusa functions as an important narrative strand in Spenser’s intricately braided poem,
and Spenser’s visual reinforcement of the myth of Medusa serves to reveal what Sarah Howe
calls “veins of continuity underlying the seemingly disparate events”5 of poetry. In The Faerie
Queene, the thread of continuity, the Medusa image, reveals Spenser’s underlying problem with
female erotic power.

Interestingly, even the ekphrastic poetic technique shows both a Medusian and an anti-
female quality. James Heffernan believes that in the Medusa model of ekphrasis the poet’s gaze
represents male authority directed toward the artwork, which becomes a symbol of female
power.6 The work of art, like the female, mesmerizes the viewer, in the case of The Faerie
Queene the viewer is a male poet. Caught in a trap of opposing emotional responses, the male
feels both desire and fear while gazing on the alluring female, and he becomes a petrified
captive. On the one hand, the beauty of the image stiffens the viewer causing him to long for
sexual union, while at the same time the viewer experiences a fear of the “Other”7 and an
accompanying fear of castration. In the case of The Faerie Queene, the Medusian model8 of
ekphrasis aptly explains Spenser’s often cited ambivalence toward feminine figures and the
female form. Spenser’s buried Medusian agenda reflects his psychological attitude toward the
feminine, one that he cannot explicitly state. While publicly, female power entrances him, and
feminine beauty provides the basis for much of his poetry, privately, he is horrified by the
female’s Medusa-like power to castrate males by causing emotional stasis and disempowerment.

In Spenser’s work, The Faerie Queene, the thread of continuity, the Medusa images,
reveal Spenser’s underlying problem with female erotic power as well as authoritarian
dominance. In one Medusian thread, Spenser draws on classical prototypes portraying Arthur’s
shield through the trope of classical ekphrasis, but initially the lack of any type of iconographic
image on the shield seems to be problematic. Most ekphrastic representations focus on the
symbolic value of the images. For example, in both the ekphrastic description of Achilles’s
shield by Homer and Aeneas’s shield by Virgil, complex scenes of war and peace, symbolically
linked to the larger issues of the story, proliferate. Can the description of a shield devoid of
imagery carry the same ekphrastic import? For Michael Leslie, Spenser’s depiction of Arthur’s

blank shield displays “an invisible worm of anxiety concerning the image” and he contends that
the lack of an image reflects a Calvinist reluctance to create an idol-like visual icon.9 However,
like Mitsi Efterpi,10 I posit that the unadorned yet highly reflective shield refers back to the
Medusa myth as an analogue to the mirror shield Athena gives to Perseus. With the shield,
Perseus is able to reflect Medusa’s lethal gaze and incapacitate her.11 Similarly, in The Faerie
Queene, the shield’s mirrored surface acts as a potentially apotropaic weapon for Arthur, the
receiver of the gaze, and he remains impervious, as the powerful gaze is redirected to harm the
gazer. In fact, Arthur keeps the shield veiled because when it is unleashed it has the Medusian
ability to turn Arthur’s enemies to stone. Yet, Spenser blurs the traditional gender assignments,
as Arthur is associated with the female goddess Athena, the shield possessor, as well as the
heroic male Perseus, the Medusa slayer.

While weapons are inherently protective, Julia M. Walker observes that the poem can
serve an apotropaic function as well, because in “Medusa we find a reflection of society’s fear of
the power of women, even as we find the paradigm poet’s have constructed to deflect that
fear.”12 Theresa M. Krier observes that “the Petrarchian danger to the male viewer [is that] of
stasis before transcendent feminine beauty.”13 The sight of his loved one stuns the Petrarchian
poet in the same way the sight of Medusa turns her voyeur to stone. Therefore, in the Petrarchian
trope, the poet treats the female as a work of art, most often concentrating on the female head,
with the facial features and hair at the forefront of literary depiction. In order to pay tribute to the
feminine form (the work of nature’s art), the Petrarchian gazer, the poet, dissects the female and
depicts the feminine parts in words. Within the formulaic Petrarchian structure, the poet
describes the eyes, hair, skin etc. as discrete parts, fragmenting the body to demystify the object

of desire.14 By creating the Petrarchian blazon the poet takes control by defining the female
entity and reducing it to less forceful parts.

Spenser also neutralizes the female through a reference to the Greek conception of
poetry. Significantly, Pegasus, the winged horse, springs to life as Medusa’s blood touches the
earth. Traditionally, Pegasus represents poetry; thus, by extension Perseus in controlling
Pegasus/poetry epitomizes the poet.15 Furthermore, Medusa’s decapitation by Perseus produces
Pegasus, creating an analogy between the birth of poetry and the destruction of the female by the
poet. Reducing the female image through Petrarchian blazons, the poet becomes Perseus,
reflecting the female image of and then removing the parts from the whole, as Perseus removed
Medusa’s head from her body. Just as Perseus appropriates Medusa’s head for his own
apotropaic purposes, by mounting her head on Athena’s shield, the poet exploits the female by
scattering parts of the woman through the text. The poet then takes ownership of the poem, and
female power becomes male product. In comparison with Renaissance blazons, Medusa’s head is
a grotesque parody of the blazon as her hair, rather than like snakes, is actually composed of
serpents (see Fig. 1). In this way, the simile transforms into horrific reality. Similarly, the poet
uses metaphorical descriptions of the pieces of his love to construct a blazon. By capturing and
reflecting the image of love the poet is empowered, as the skill of his poetic mimesis garners him
accolades and gives him a platform to demystify the feminine. Spenser, never one to follow
thematic norms, plays with the Petrarchian implications of the Medusa myth throughout The
Faerie Queen.

In one of Spenser’s transfigurations of Petrarchian power the ability of male rhetoric, as
well as female beauty, to stun becomes apparent. In Book III, as Busirane transfixes Amoret with
the symbols he recalls Medusa reciting: “And her small waste girt round with yron bands, /Vnto

a brazen pillour, by the which she stands/ And her before the vile Enchaunter sate, / Figuring
straunge characters of his art” (7.30). Amoret stands immobile visually merging with the stone
pillar like a grotesque caryatid or a Medusian victim. In this example, Busirane becomes
Medusa, turning Amoret to stone with his words and gaze. Next, the image dissolves as
Britomart alters into Medusa gazing on Amoret and listening to Busirane’s profane incantations.
Britomart sees herself in the predicament of Amoret; what she views is a horrific projection of
her own psyche, and the sight evokes a catatonic response from Britomart as she freezes in her
Medusian form. According to Lauren deVos, Medusa is “the self which cannot be looked at” 16
and Britomart is staring at this forbidden self-image.

Next, Spenser joins the power of the rhetorical with the power of the visual, resulting in
cathartic androgyny. Busirane wounds Britomart in a manner reminiscent of the torture of
Amoret as “[t]he wicked weapon rashly he did wrest, /And turning to his next fell intent,
/Vnwares it stroke into[Britomart’s] snowie chest, /That litle drops empurpled her faire brest
(3.7.33). Just as Perseus injures Medusa by first causing her to view her own ghastly
countenance, Busirane temporarily debilitates Britomart by forcing her to observe the lustful
wounding of Amoret, in which she sees the reflection of her possible future incapacitation.
However, Britomart, rather than succumbing to the Petrarchian machinations of Busirane,
becomes an impervious Medusa, and asserts power over Busirane nullifying his charming
symbols.

In order to resist the riveting power of the Petrarchian blazon Britomart must draw on the
male elements she has taken into her character. For example, in the aforementioned scene, one of
the most bizarre yet powerful passages in the poem, Britomart’s assumes the countenance of
Medusa. Paradoxically, while Britomart stares at Amoret, she also takes on the male role of the

gazer. Here, Britomart, through her acquisition of that male role, concurrently adopts the
vulnerable countenance of the male spectator; however, because she is simultaneously female
she embodies Medusa as well. The resulting image splits into a Medusa-like Britomart both
horrified and horrifying, both male and female. Moreover, Spenser continues the surreal gender
inversion, describing Britomart in the role of a knight with metallic armor in the same visual
context as a Medusa. He emphasizes the characteristic hair stating, “That horrour gan the virgins
hart to perse,/ And her faire locks vp stared stiff on end,/ Hearing him those same bloody lynes
reherse/” (3.7.36). In this scene, Britomart is clad in male armor, including a helmet, precluding
the possibility of her locks “standing on end” creating an example of the “perceptual
contradiction” Bender articulates17. Yet, this impossible description does not impair the potency
of the passage, but instead adds to the frenetic immediacy of the event. Strangely, Spenser’s
incongruent images reflect an internal state as much as an outward manifestation excluding
“concrete linkage between the initial visual event and its metaphorical elaboration” (Bender 55).
The image of Britomart cannot exist as stated by Spenser; yet, it supplies one of the most
arresting mental visions in the poem. The reader/spectator must quickly shift perspectives to
make sense of the narrative on the literal plane and the resulting internal discord initiates a
multiplicity of schematic connections on the symbolic plane. Britomart is Medusa and Perseus;
she is knight and damsel; she is female guise playing the male role; she is the incarnation of the
queen with kingly power. Every shift carries implications of meaning, such as Spenser’s
discomfort with female power and his fear of the female body untamed by Petrarchian disabling
rhetoric. He serves female beauty as a poet, but he is much like Busirane, holding the female
“other” at bay through his magical verses.

Finally, in Book V, the psychological dilemma surfaces and the Medusian climax occurs
as Artegall and Britomart confront the female monster in the guise of Radigund. Here the
Medusian symbol again accompanies gender confusion, as Artegall becomes the feminized thrall
of Radigund, the Amazon, losing his armor and weapons in the process. Artegall loses masculine
power after he gazes on Radigund and her beauty incapacitates him. In essence, the female work
of art, the feminine face, effectively emasculates Artegall. An extreme manifestation of the ills of
the unrestrained female Other, Radigund represents the realization of the male ekphrastic fear of
castration. She is the most blatant expression of Spenser’s psychological discomfort and
helplessness in the face of all things feminine. Interestingly, Britomart represents the perfect hero
as her feminine orientation defies the danger of Medusian castration.

In Book V, within this complex writerly edifice, Spenser’s investigation of feminine
danger and desire explodes. Radigund cannot be overcome by Spenser’s prior solutions, such as
protection with apotropaic weapons, or neutralization by the blazon. In this case, Spenser enlists
a female, Britomart, to restore the traditional patriarchal gender order. Radigund, a Medusa
figure, paralyzes men with her beauty, but Britomart reflects female beauty back at Radigund. In
a grotesque parody of the chivalric battle that yields a female prize to the victor, Britomart and
Radigund fight for possession of Artegall, the neutered male. He signifies the male castration
fear realized. His pertrification during his encounter with Medusian female beauty causes his
social and psychological castration. Displaying remorseless power, Radigund symbolizes
Medusa unfettered.

However, once again the Medusa figure, Radigund, exposes Britomart to the self she
must not see. Britomart, by taking on the male persona, runs the danger of becoming Radigund,
the female devoid of femininity, a monster. Ironically, in facing the Medusa, Britomart must take

on the male tendency toward unrestrained violence in order to restore male dominion.
Significantly, Spenser implies that Britomart uses Artegall’s weapons to battle Radigund. Dolon
mistakes Britomart for Artegall because he notices “many tokens plaine” (6.34) specifically
referring to Artegall’s weapons stating “[o]f armes hast knighthood stolen” (6.37).18 If Britomart
possesses Artegall’s shield she must also be carrying his sword, Chrysoar. Britomart likely
appropriates male power through Chrysoar in the same way Arthur confiscates female power
with the use of the reflective shield. If so, she uses a Medusian agent to dispatch a Medusa figure
with Chrysoar, a falchion named for Medusa’s first male child. Britomart dispatches the Medusa
double, Radigund. In a way, the mythical Medusa kills herself as it is the reception of her own
gaze, and sight of her own reflected image, that dazes her allowing Perseus to deliver the
deathblow. Similarly, Radigund a powerful woman and Medusa figure faces her double in
Britomart, another powerful Medusian woman.19 Rather than nullifying the female form through
the rhetoric of poetry, these female Medusas “spared not/ Their dainty parts” made for “other
vses” but “hackt and hewd, as if such vse they hated”( 7.29), attacking the anatomical sites of
feminine power and identity. The use of phallic swords in these actions points to surrogate rape,
implying the Medusian castration threat can only be defeated through phallic penetration.

The confrontation between these like characters produces one of the most ekphrastically
potent images in the poem, when “[Britomart] with one stroke both head and helmet cleft”(7.34)
decapitating Radigund. In this case, Spenser places the emphasis on the victor’s moment of
power against the monstrous entity rather than the face of the vanquished monster. Cellini’s
sculpture depicting Peresus’s victory over Medusa captures the mood of Spenser’s description;
note the similarity between the facial features of Perseus and Medusa (see Fig. 2 ) despite their
contrasting genders. Although Spenser does not give the reader a detailed explanation of the

pose of the conquering Britomart, the event evokes a dreadful mental picture that captures the
reader in the same way the Medusian gaze freezes the viewer. The image, more perverse due to
the intergender destruction consolidates the Medusian theme. The reader even experiences a rare
moment of closure, until Spenser continues describing the crippling aftermath of Radigund’s
death. Oddly enough, Britomart’s murder of Radigund’s is an act of self-annihilation. After
Radigund’s death, Britomart helps elevate Artegall to a position of power, but she abdicates her
prominent position in the text. Britomart’s coup destroys her own internal feminine power and
she fades from the poem. In the end, the destruction of both Medusa figures frees Artegall from
the prison of female emotional ties as well as the obligation to feminine subjugation. The
Medusian threat has been contained by consummative rape and violence.

Kelly Quinn writes that “[i]n the Renaissance, texts have meaning prior to the reader,
whose responsibility it is to uncover that meaning”20 and I assert that Renaissance authors insert
ekphrastic passages fraught with symbolic references as a means to offer their readers maps to
the microtext. Problematically, The Faerie Queene confounds the reader, as the overt message
does not coincide with the authorly clues to the subtext. Spenser transmits his subversive
message most effectively through ekphrastic imagery, pregnant with meaning, contradicting the
narrative. He exploits the Medusa myth as a polyphonous vehicle for multiple iconographic
connotations. In his hierarchical confrontation of the female image, Spenser first uses classical
ekphrasis to describe apotropaic devices common to the epic. However, shields and swords fail
to divert the female image. In an obvious escalation, Spenser then employs disabling Petrarchian
rhetoric in an attempt to disempower feminine beauty. As the poem progresses, the Medusian
images become more numerous and intense as Spenser inverts gender and uses surrealistic
ekphrasis as a prelude to climactic violence against the female.

Far from “fashioning a gentleman,” Spenser gives full rein to his “dark conceit” until the
bloody outcome of Book V, and yet, in full Spenserian tradition, there is no real resolution. The
Medusian threat lingers, neither heterosexually consummated nor permanently exiled. The text
breaks down after book V becoming less intense and almost perfunctorily didactic with sexual
tension dissipating as Spenser moves to historical and political themes. In this multifaceted work,
the Medusa theme elucidated through ekphrasis provides the most intense and disturbing strand
in the text. Spenser’s exploration of the dangerous seductive power of the female Other
mesmerizes the reader. Ultimately, the reader vicariously experiences the uncomfortable
psychological dissonance of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. The mental pictures Spenser
generates transform the reader into a victim, leaving the reader to “wonder at that sight,/ And
stand astonisht lyke to those which red/ Medusaes mazeful hed.”21

Notes

1 These phrases are taken from Spenser’s “Letter to Raleigh” written 23 of January 1589. Spenser: The Faerie
Queene, Ed. A. C. Hamilton, text edited by Hiroshi Yamashita and Toshiyuki Suzuki, Harlow, England: Pearson
Education Limited, 2001, page 714.
2 John Bender says “Spenser has rightly been esteemed as one of the most pictorial of English writers” (543) in The
Spenser Encyclopedia, General Editor: A. C. Hamilton, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Additionally,
Theresa M. Krier’s book Gazing on Secret Sights: Spenser, Classical Imitation, and the Decorums of Vision Ithica:
Cornell University Press, 1990 and John Bender’s book Spenser and Literary Pictorialism Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972 are devoted to exploring pictorialism in Spenser’s works.
3 James A. Heffernen discusses pregnant images on page five of Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from
Homer to Ashbery,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. In addition, Sarah Howe’s article “ ‘ Pregnant
Images of Life’: Visual Art and Representation in Arcadia and The Faerie Queene”, The Cambridge Quarterly,
34.1 (2005) pages 33-63 provides another source for the idea of images “pregnant” with meaning.
4 From W. J. T. Mitchell’s “Ekphrasis and the Other.” South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 695-719.
5 From page 42 of Sarah Howe’s “ ‘Pregnant Images of Life’: Visual Art and Representation in Arcadia and The
FaerieQueene.” The Cambridge Quarterly 34.1 (2005) 33-53. Sarah Howe provides a discussion of Sidney’s
defense of poetry in relation to what Howe calls “Horace’s notoriously vague ‘ ut pictura poesis’” and examines the
semiotic and didactic functions of pictorialism in Spenser’s, The Faerie Queene.
6 James A. Heffernen in Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery, Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1993, claims that the Medusian model does not apply to all examples of ekphrasis stating “the Medusa
model simply will not work as a master theory of ekphrasis” (109). However, I believe the Medusa model of
ekphrasis is applicable to many of the moments of ekphrasis within The Faerie Queene.
7 See the article “Ekphrasis and the Other” W. J. T. Mitchell, South Atlantic Quarterly 91.3 (Summer 1992) 695-
717. W. J. T. Mitchell writes of the diverse literary representations possible when ekphrasis processes “the Other”
such as “[t]he alien visual object of verbal representation can reveal its difference from the speaker in all sorts of
ways: the historic distance between archaic and modern (Keats urn); the alienation between the human and its own
commodities (Steven’s jar); the conflict between a stable social order and the monstrous revolutionary Others that
threaten it (Shelly’s Medusa); the gap between a historical epic obsessed with war and and a vision of the ordinary,
nonhistorical order of human life that provides a framework for a critique of that historical struggle (Homer’s
shield)” (717).
8 Central to my ideas on ekphrasis is a concept suggested by James A. Hefferenan in Museum of Words: The Poetics
of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbury, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. On page 109 Heffernan refers to Mitchell’s
ideas of ekphrastic hope and fear and extends the concept to propose a Medusian model of ekphrasis suggested by
Grant Scott in his dissertation Seduced by Stone: Keats, Ekphrasis and Gender University of California at Los
Angeles, 1989.
9 From pages 76 and 77 of “Art and the Faerie Queene” by M. Leslie, Proceedings of the British Academy (1990):
73-107. Michael Leslie examines the Calvanist attitude toward art objects and the conflict of Protestant values with
the classical Vitruvian perspective regarding architecture revived in the Renaissance.
10 Mitsi Efterpi sees a Medusian import to the mirrored surface and apotropaic properties of Arthur’s shield. For a
full account see her article “Veiling Medusa: Arthur’s Shield in The Faerie Queene.” The Anatomy of Tudor
Literature: Proceedings of the First International Conference of the Tudor Symposium (1998) 9 (2001) 130-141.
11 While there are many varying accounts of the Medusa myth, I relied on Ovid’s Metamorphose because I believe
that Spenser’s poetry often contains Ovidian references. I used an edition translated by A. E. Watts and beautifully
illustrated by Pablo Picasso. Metamorphoses: An English Translation by A. E. Watts: With the Etchings of Pablo
Picasso. Berkley: University of California Press, 1954. I also consulted “The Look of the Gorgon” found in Hazel E.
Barnes’s book The Meddling Gods: Four Essays on Classical Themes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974.
12 From page 46 of Julia M. Walker’s book Medusa’s Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and the
Metamorphosis of the Female Self, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998. Walker’s book thoroughly
examines the Medusa myth in Renaissance poetry.
13 From page 179 of Theresa M. Krier’s book Gazing on Secret Sights: Spenser Classical Imitation, and the
Decorum of Vision. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 1990.

14 The disability theorist, Lennard J. Davis states that “the disabling of the body part or function is then part of the
removal of value” (2404). Moreover, he connects the Medusa myth to his ideas on disabling the female in
“Enforcing Normalcy” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism Ed. Vincent B. Leitch, New York: W. W.
Norton and Co. 2001.
15 Hazel E. Barnes discusses the symbolic associations of Perseus and Pegasus in “The Look of the Gorgon” The
Meddling Gods: Four Essays on Classical Themes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974. The chapter also
describes Pegasus’s birth and familial.relationship to Chrysaor.
16 From Lauren deVos’s article “To See or Not to See: The Ambiguity of Medusa in Relation to Mulisch’s The
Procedure” in the online journal Image and Narrative: The Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative 1780.678
(January 2003) imageandnarrative.be/uncanny/laurendevos.htm. This article provides a good background of the
specifics of the Medusa myth as well as Freud’s psychological interpretation of the significance of the Medusa
image.
17 This quote refers back to paragraph 2. The idea is discussed in the “Pictorialism” section by John Bender in The
Spenser Encyclopedia, General Editor A. C. Hamilton, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990 page 543.
18 Page 552 footnote.Spenser: The Faerie Queene, Ed. A. C. Hamilton, text edited by Hiroshi Yamashita and
Toshiyuki Suzuki, Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
19 Spenser establishes Britomart as a Medusa figure in the House of Busirane episode (Book 3.7.30). For my account
see page 16 paragraph 2.
20 Kelly A. Quinn examines the prevalence of ekphrasis (ecphrasis) in Elizabethan literature and ties objective
interpretation to the reading conventions of Elizabethans. The quote is found on page 30 of Quinn’s “Ecphrasis and
Reading Practices in Elizabethan Narrative Verse.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 44.1(2004) 19-35.
21 From Edmund Spenser’s “Epilthalamion” The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser Ed. William
Oram. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989 page 669.

Figure 1
Caravaggio. Medusa. c.1598. Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Fig. 2
Perseus Beheading Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini 1645-1554

Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence,Bronze,18 feet high

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