Jane Ellen Harrison
Encyclopedia
Jane Ellen Harrison was a British
classical
scholar, linguist
and feminist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi
and Walter Burkert
, of modern studies in Greek mythology
. She applied 19th century archaeological
discoveries to the interpretation of Greek religion in ways that have become standard. Contemporary classics scholar Mary Beard
, Harrison's biographer, has described her as "in a way ... [Britain's] first female professional 'career academic'".
, Yorkshire
and first received tutelage under family governess
es in subjects such as the many languages Harrison learned: initially German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, later expanded to about sixteen languages, including Russian. Harrison spent most of her professional life at Newnham, the progressive, recently-established college for women at Cambridge
. At Newnham, one of her students was Hope Mirrlees
, the writer and poet, with whom she lived in England and later in Paris. Harrison knew Edward Burne-Jones
and Walter Pater
, and moved in the Bloomsbury group
, with Virginia Woolf
(who was one of Harrison's close friends and looked to her as a mentor), Lytton Strachey
, Clive Bell
and Roger Fry
. With Gilbert Murray
, F. M. Cornford
, and A. B. Cook, she was inspired to apply anthropology
and ethnography
to the study of classical art and ritual. Harrison and this later group of people have become known as Cambridge Ritualists
.
. Rather than support women's suffrage
by protest
ing, Harrison applied her scholarship in anthropology
to defend women's right to vote. In responding to an anti-suffragist critic, Harrison demonstrates this moderate
ideology: "[The Women's Movement] is not an attempt to arrogate man's prerogative of manhood; it is not even an attempt to assert and emphasize women's privilege of womanhood; it is simply the demand that in the life of woman, as in the life of man, space and liberty shall be found for a thing bigger than either manhood or womanhood -- for humanity." (84-85, Alpha and Omega) To this end, Harrison's motto was Terence
's homo sum; humani nihil mihi alienum est ("I am a human being; nothing that is human do I account alien.")
, where she gained a Certificate
, and, in 1874, continued her studies in the classics
at Cambridge University's Newnham College. Her early work earned Harrison two honorary doctorates, an LLD
from University of Aberdeen
in 1895 and DLitt from the University of Durham in 1897. This recognition afforded Harrison the opportunity to return to Newnham College as a lecturer
in 1898, and her position was renewed continuously until Harrison retired in 1922.
's Odyssey
and motifs of the Greek vase-painters were drawing upon similar deep sources for mythology, the opinion that had not been common in earlier classical archaeology, that the repertory of vase-painters offered some unusual commentaries on myth and ritual.
Her approach in her great work, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), was to proceed from the ritual to the myth it inspired.: "In theology facts are harder to seek, truth more difficult to formulate than in ritual." (p 163). Thus she began her book with analyses of the best-known of the Athenian festivals
: Anthesteria
, harvest festivals Thargelia
, Kallynteria, Plynteria
, and the women's festivals, in which she detected many primitive survivals, Thesmophoria
, Arrophoria, Skirophoria, Stenia
and Haloa.
's work. Harrison and her generation depended upon anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor
(who was himself influenced by Darwin and evolutionary ideas) for some new themes of cultural evolution, especially his 1871 work, Primitive Culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. After a socially Darwinian
analysis of the origins of religion, Harrison argues that religiosity is anti-intellectual
and dogma
tic, yet she defended the cultural necessity of religion and mysticism. In her essay The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion (1909), Harrison concluded: "Every dogma religion has hitherto produced is probably false, but for all that the religious or mystical spirit may be the only way of apprehending some things, and these of enormous importance. It may also be that the contents of this mystical apprehension cannot be put into language without being falsified and misstated, that they have rather to be felt and lived than uttered and intellectually analyzed; yet they are somehow true and necessary to life." (177, Alpha and Omega)
marked a deep break in Harrison's life. Harrison never visited Italy or Greece
after the war: she mostly wrote revisions or synopses of previous publications, and pacifist
leanings isolated her. Upon retiring (in 1922), Harrison briefly lived in Paris
, but she returned to London
when her health began to fail.
has often written of Harrison's influence on her own work. Paglia argues that Harrison's career has been ignored by second wave feminists who object to Harrison's findings, and who, ironically, seek to efface the careers of prominent pre-WWII female scholars to bolster their claims of male domination in academe.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
classical
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
scholar, linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and feminist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi
Karl Kerényi
Károly Kerényi was a Hungarian scholar in classical philology, one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology.- Hungary 1897–1943 :...
and Walter Burkert
Walter Burkert
Walter Burkert is a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult.An emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States...
, of modern studies in Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
. She applied 19th century archaeological
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
discoveries to the interpretation of Greek religion in ways that have become standard. Contemporary classics scholar Mary Beard
Mary Beard (classicist)
Winifred Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Newnham College. She is the Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog "", which appears in The Times as a regular column...
, Harrison's biographer, has described her as "in a way ... [Britain's] first female professional 'career academic'".
Personal life
Harrison was born in CottinghamCottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire
Cottingham is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies just to the north-west of the city of Kingston upon Hull...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
and first received tutelage under family governess
Governess
A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...
es in subjects such as the many languages Harrison learned: initially German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, later expanded to about sixteen languages, including Russian. Harrison spent most of her professional life at Newnham, the progressive, recently-established college for women at Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. At Newnham, one of her students was Hope Mirrlees
Hope Mirrlees
Hope Mirrlees was a British translator, poet and novelist. She is best known for the 1926 Lud-in-the-Mist, a fantasy novel and influential classic, and for Paris: A Poem, a modernist poem which critic Julia Briggs deemed "modernism's lost masterpiece, a work of extraordinary energy and intensity,...
, the writer and poet, with whom she lived in England and later in Paris. Harrison knew Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
and Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
, and moved in the Bloomsbury group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
, with Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
(who was one of Harrison's close friends and looked to her as a mentor), Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
, Clive Bell
Clive Bell
Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
and Roger Fry
Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
. With Gilbert Murray
Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...
, F. M. Cornford
F. M. Cornford
Francis Macdonald Cornford was an English classical scholar and poet.He was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a Fellow from 1899 and held a university teaching post from 1902...
, and A. B. Cook, she was inspired to apply anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
to the study of classical art and ritual. Harrison and this later group of people have become known as Cambridge Ritualists
Cambridge Ritualists
The Cambridge Ritualists, the myth and ritual school, were a recognised group of classical scholars, mostly in Cambridge, England, including Jane Ellen Harrison, Gilbert Murray , A. B. Cook, and others...
.
Suffragist
Harrison was, at least ideologically, a moderate suffragist of the early feminist movementFeminist movement
The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence...
. Rather than support women's suffrage
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
by protest
Protest
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...
ing, Harrison applied her scholarship in anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
to defend women's right to vote. In responding to an anti-suffragist critic, Harrison demonstrates this moderate
Moderate
In politics and religion, a moderate is an individual who is not extreme, partisan or radical. In recent years, political moderates has gained traction as a buzzword....
ideology: "[The Women's Movement] is not an attempt to arrogate man's prerogative of manhood; it is not even an attempt to assert and emphasize women's privilege of womanhood; it is simply the demand that in the life of woman, as in the life of man, space and liberty shall be found for a thing bigger than either manhood or womanhood -- for humanity." (84-85, Alpha and Omega) To this end, Harrison's motto was Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
's homo sum; humani nihil mihi alienum est ("I am a human being; nothing that is human do I account alien.")
Scholarship
Harrison began formal study at Cheltenham Ladies' CollegeCheltenham Ladies' College
The Cheltenham Ladies' College is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.-History:The school was founded in 1853...
, where she gained a Certificate
Certificate of Higher Education
A Certificate of Higher Education is a higher education qualification in the United Kingdom. It is awarded after one year full-time study at a university or other higher education institution. A Cert.HE is an independent tertiary award, an award in its own right, and students can study for a...
, and, in 1874, continued her studies in the classics
The Classics
The Classics was an American vocal group formed in 1958 in Brooklyn.The Classics first sang together in high school; two of them had previously sung in a group called The Del-Rays. In 1959, under the auspices of manager Jim Gribble, they recorded their first single, "Cinderella"; the record Bubbled...
at Cambridge University's Newnham College. Her early work earned Harrison two honorary doctorates, an LLD
Legum Doctor
Legum Doctor is a doctorate-level academic degree in law, or an honorary doctorate, depending on the jurisdiction. The double L in the abbreviation refers to the early practice in the University of Cambridge to teach both Canon Law and Civil Law, the double L indicating the plural, Doctor of both...
from University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
in 1895 and DLitt from the University of Durham in 1897. This recognition afforded Harrison the opportunity to return to Newnham College as a lecturer
Lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...
in 1898, and her position was renewed continuously until Harrison retired in 1922.
Early work
Harrison's first monograph, in 1882, drew on the thesis that both HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
and motifs of the Greek vase-painters were drawing upon similar deep sources for mythology, the opinion that had not been common in earlier classical archaeology, that the repertory of vase-painters offered some unusual commentaries on myth and ritual.
Her approach in her great work, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), was to proceed from the ritual to the myth it inspired.: "In theology facts are harder to seek, truth more difficult to formulate than in ritual." (p 163). Thus she began her book with analyses of the best-known of the Athenian festivals
Athenian festivals
The festival calendar of city-state of classical Athens involved the staging of a large number of festivals each year. These Athenian festivals included:-Athena:...
: Anthesteria
Anthesteria
Anthesteria, one of the four Athenian festivals in honour of Dionysus , was held annually for three days, the eleventh to thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion ; it was preceded by the Lenaia...
, harvest festivals Thargelia
Thargelia
Thargelia was one of the chief Athenian festivals in honour of the Delian Apollo and Artemis, held on their birthdays, the 6th and 7th of the month Thargelion ....
, Kallynteria, Plynteria
Plynteria
Plynteria was a festival of ancient Greece celebrated at Athens every year, on the 22nd of Thargelion, in honor of Athena Polias, with the heroine Aglauros , whose temple stood on the Acropolis...
, and the women's festivals, in which she detected many primitive survivals, Thesmophoria
Thesmophoria
Thesmophoria was a festival held in Greek cities, in honor of the goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The name derives from thesmoi, or laws by which men must work the land. The Thesmophoria were the most widespread festivals and the main expression of the cult of Demeter, aside from the...
, Arrophoria, Skirophoria, Stenia
Stenia
Stenia is a small genus from the orchid family . It was established by John Lindley in 1837. This epiphytic plants occur in warm, humid habitats of Trinidad and the Amazonian slope of the northern Andean region in South America....
and Haloa.
Cultural evolution (or social Darwinism)
Harrison alluded to and commented on the cultural applications of Charles DarwinCharles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's work. Harrison and her generation depended upon anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor
Edward Burnett Tylor
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor , was an English anthropologist.Tylor is representative of cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive Culture and Anthropology, he defined the context of the scientific study of anthropology, based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell...
(who was himself influenced by Darwin and evolutionary ideas) for some new themes of cultural evolution, especially his 1871 work, Primitive Culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. After a socially Darwinian
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
analysis of the origins of religion, Harrison argues that religiosity is anti-intellectual
Anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible...
and dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
tic, yet she defended the cultural necessity of religion and mysticism. In her essay The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion (1909), Harrison concluded: "Every dogma religion has hitherto produced is probably false, but for all that the religious or mystical spirit may be the only way of apprehending some things, and these of enormous importance. It may also be that the contents of this mystical apprehension cannot be put into language without being falsified and misstated, that they have rather to be felt and lived than uttered and intellectually analyzed; yet they are somehow true and necessary to life." (177, Alpha and Omega)
Later life
World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
marked a deep break in Harrison's life. Harrison never visited Italy or Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
after the war: she mostly wrote revisions or synopses of previous publications, and pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
leanings isolated her. Upon retiring (in 1922), Harrison briefly lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, but she returned to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
when her health began to fail.
Devotees
American humanities scholar Camille PagliaCamille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia , is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984...
has often written of Harrison's influence on her own work. Paglia argues that Harrison's career has been ignored by second wave feminists who object to Harrison's findings, and who, ironically, seek to efface the careers of prominent pre-WWII female scholars to bolster their claims of male domination in academe.
Greek topics
Books on the anthropological search for the origins of Greek religion and mythology, include:- Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903, revised 1908, 1922)
- 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 reflections
- Alpha and OmegaAlpha and Omega (Harrison)Alpha and Omega is a collection of essays, lectures, and letters written by Jane Ellen Harrison and published for Harrison during the outbreak of World War I.-Contents:*Crabbed Age and Youth — read to Trinity College...
(1915) - Reminiscences of a Student's Life (1925)
Further reading
- Barnard-Cogno, Camille. "Jane Harrison (1850–1928), between German and English Scholarship," European Review of History, Vol. 13, Issue 4. (2006), pp. 661–676.
- Stewart, Jessie G. Jane Ellen Harrison: a Portrait from Letters 1959. A memoir based on her voluminous correspondence with Gilbert MurrayGilbert MurrayGeorge Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...
.
External links
, densely packed with information; extensive references- Newnham College Archives of Jane Ellen Harrison holds her personal correspondence; brief biography
- Jane Harrison by Theo van Rysselberghe at the NPG
- Essays by Harrison at Quotidiana.org
- Works by Jane Ellen Harrison at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion by Jane Ellen Harrison, 1912 - online copy at the University of Chicago Library
- Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (2nd ed. 1908)
- Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921)
- Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides (1906)
- Introductory Studies in Greek Art (1902)