Jane Ellen Harrison

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Jane Ellen Harrison in a drawing by Théo van Rysselberghe .

Jane Ellen Harrison (born September 9, 1850 in Cottingham , Yorkshire , † April 5, 1928 in London ) was an important British scholar of antiquity , especially a Greek , religious historian , linguist and also an influential moderate feminist . Together with Karl Kerényi and Walter Burkert, she is considered to be the founder of modern scientific research into Greek mythology and applied archaeological methods to the interpretation of ancient Greek religiosity - a research approach that has now become generally established.

Life

Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire. The governesses of the family taught her in particular the many languages ​​she had mastered, initially German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and at the age of sixteen also Russian. She then studied at Cheltenham Ladies' College and from 1874 at Newnham College , a recently established, progressive and women-only college of the University of Cambridge . She became acquainted with Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Pater and joined the Bloomsbury Group , which also included Virginia Woolf , Lytton Strachey , Clive Bell and Roger Fry . Woolf was one of Harrison's closest friends and mentor. Harrison earned PhDs from the University of Aberdeen (LLD, 1895) and Durham College (DLitt, 1897) through her early studies . This recognition enabled her to return to Newnham College as a lecturer in 1898, a position that was continually renewed until her retirement in 1922.

Harrison took an early interest in the application of anthropological and ethnographic methods to the study of classical art and rites - an interest she shared with Gilbert Murray , FM Cornford, and AB Cook . These four soon became known as the Cambridge Ritualists (roughly: "Cambridge ritual researchers").

Harrison's private and scientific life was suddenly interrupted by the First World War. She was subsequently unable to visit Italy or Greece and devoted herself mainly to revising previous publications. Their pacifist attitudes isolated them socially. After her retirement in 1922, she lived briefly in Paris and then returned to London , already in poor health .

Political commitment

Harrison was heavily involved in women's rights and is considered a moderate suffragette of the early feminist movement . Instead of demonstrating for women's voting rights, she defended these rights through anthropological work. For example, she replied to one critic of the movement: “The women's movement is not an attempt to usurp the privileges of men; Nor is it about asserting or emphasizing women's privileges; it is simply about the demand that in the life of a woman, as in the life of a man, there should be space and freedom for something that is greater than masculinity or femininity. ”In this sense, Harrison's motto is formulated by the sentence: "I am a human; I don't consider anything human to be alien to me. "

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Early Studies

Harrison's public lectures on Greek art were extremely popular in the 1880s, and her unconventional, outspoken views were well known; her interest in pagan rituals also attracted attention. Her listeners were mostly wealthy women. Harrison studied the historical-critical work on the historical Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss and Johann Jakob Bachofen's analysis of the ancient matriarchy in mother law (1861). Her first monograph, published in 1882, examined mythological representations on Greek vases and developed the thesis that these representations reveal unusual conceptions of myth and rites that go back to sources on which Homer's Odyssey was based.

Her major work Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , which was later reissued many times and is still important , was published in 1903 - a work to which the following applies: “Once or twice within a generation, a research project changes an intellectual landscape so radically that everyone is forced is to re-examine otherwise unsolicited assumptions. ”Harrison's approach was to proceed from an analysis of the rite to explanations of the underlying mythical ideas, according to the principle:“ In theology facts are more difficult to trace and truths more difficult to formulate than in ritual. ” The work therefore begins with an analysis of the most famous Athenian festivities ( Anthesteria , harvest festivals Thargelia , Kallynteria , Plynteria , women's festivals, in which she demonstrated the persistence of numerous archaic motifs, Thesmophoria , Arrophoria , Skirophoria , Stenia , Haloa ).

Cultural evolution

Harrison also commented on possible applications of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to cultural studies. Fundamental to this was the work of the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor , especially his study Primitive Culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom , published in 1871 . Harrison developed a social Darwinian analysis of the origins of religion and came to the conclusion that religions are anti-rational and dogmatic. Nonetheless, she defended the cultural necessity of religion. “Any dogma that a religion has produced to date is most likely wrong, but religious or mystical attitudes may be the only way to grasp certain things - things that are of extraordinary importance. It is possible that the contents of this mystical conception cannot be brought up for discussion without becoming incorrect or incorrectly worded. Perhaps these contents have to be felt and lived rather than expressed and rationally analyzed. Nevertheless, in some way they are true and vital. "

Fonts

Greek Studies
  • Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), reprinted several times, most recently Princeton: Princeton University Press (Mythos Series) 1991, with an introduction by Robert Ackerman .
  • Heresy and Humanity (1911)
  • Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1912, revised 1927)
  • Ancient Art and Ritual (1912)
  • Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921)
Essays and other works
  • Alpha and Omega (1915), reprinted by AMS Press: New York, 1973. ( ISBN 0-404-56753-3 )
  • Reminiscences of a Student's Life (1925)

literature

Web links

Primary texts

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Translated from Alpha and Omega, 84f
  2. ↑ Originally probably coined by Menandros ; here according to Terence : Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto (Heautontimorumenos 77, also taken from Seneca , Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, 15, 95, 53).
  3. ^ Translated from Robert Ackerman: Introduction to the reprint of the Prolegomena at Princeton University Press 1991.
  4. ^ Translated from Prolegomena, 163
  5. ^ Translated from the conclusion of Harrison's 1909 study The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion
personal data
SURNAME Harrison, Jane Ellen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British scholar of antiquity, especially a Graecist, religious historian, linguist and moderate feminist
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Cottingham
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1928
Place of death London