Mesmerism, Medusa, and the muse

Mesmerism, Medusa, and the Muse: The Romantic Discourse of Spontaneous Creativity explores the connections among the Romantic discourse of spontaneous literary creativity, the nineteenth-century cultural practice of mesmerism, and the mythical Medusa as an icon of the gendered gaze. An analysis of Medusan mesmerism in the poetry of Mary Robinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) and the prose of Mary Shelley reveals that these Romantic-era writer equate the enraptured stare that produces spontaneous literary creation will, the mesmeric trance. Those writers employ Medusan imagery to portray both the mesmerist and the mesmerized subject, a conflation of subject/object positions that complicates issues of agency, subjectivity, and gender. Building on recent scholarship about improvisational poetics, the subversive potential of mesmerism, and Medusa as a feminist icon, this work suggests that the mesmeric Medusan muse not only enables creativity for women writers but also provides a mirror in which they view (and through which they give voice to) their own societal oppression. The mesmeric Medusan muse in Romantic-era literature {OCLCbr#96}from the Ancient Mariner and the Frankenstein monster to the tragic, abandoned Sapphic poetess-often represents the face of oppression, an unwelcome and monstrous truth in nineteenth century British society For women writers in particular, braving the stare of the Medusan muse enhances empathy and therefore inspiration.