ABSTRACT

The decaying tower, the snake (Medusa), the dismembered body, the unconscious, the cannibal, the monster, and the vices and intractable aspects of social class, are reoccurring iconic images of evil embodied in people and places. Medusa was used positively to represent French Liberty after the French Revolution and her lethal power to turn people into stone was celebrated. The Greek mythological character Medusa, for whom the ship is named, fascinated writers since the early nineteenth century. Writers and visual artists also borrowed imagery from classical texts and mythology, the natural world, the current social polity, and fantasy. Representations of evil were deployed in many forms including satire, romantic poetry, gothic revival, fairytales, and sometimes the pairing of the naturalistic with the fantastic. In 1751, Hogarth showed his support for one of the Gin Acts with a print "Gin Lane," displaying a host of drunken Londoners in various states of debauchery.