Jane Ellen Harrison

Jane Ellen Harrison ( born September 9, 1850 † April 5, 1928 ) was a significant British scholar of antiquity, especially Gräzistin, religion historian activist, linguist and beyond, an influential moderate feminist. It shall apply with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert as the founder of modern scientific study of Greek mythology, turning archaeological methods to the interpretation of ancient Greek religiosity - a research approach which has now become generally established.

Life

Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire. Governesses of the family, they taught especially in the numerous entities controlled by languages ​​, initially German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, with sixteen years Russian. She then studied at Cheltenham Ladies' College and from 1874 at Newnham College, one shortly existing, progressive set aside for women and College, University of Cambridge. She closed her acquaintance with Edward Burne -Jones and Walter Pater and joined the Bloomsbury Group to which also belonged to Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell and Roger Fry. Woolf was one of the closest friends and mentor at the same time Harrison. Harrison acquired by their early studies doctorate from the University of Aberdeen ( LLD, 1895) and Durham College ( DLitt, 1897). This recognition enabled her 1898 return as a lecturer at the Newnham College, a position which was continuously renewed until her retirement in 1922.

Harrison began early for the application of anthropological and ethnographic methods to the study of classical art and rites to interest - an interest she shared with Gilbert Murray, FM Cornford, and AB Cook. These four were soon as Cambridge Ritualists: known (such as " ritual Researchers from Cambridge ").

Harrison's personal and scientific life was abruptly interrupted by the First World War. She was then no longer able, Italy or Greece to visit, and was devoted mainly to the revision of earlier publications. Your pacifist isolated them socially. After her retirement in 1922 took place she lived briefly in Paris and then returned, already weakened health, back to London.

Political commitment

Harrsison was strongly committed to the rights of women and is considered a moderate Suffragette the early feminist movement. Rather than demonstrating for voting rights for women, they defended these rights by anthropological work. A critic of the movement, she replied, for example: " The women's movement is not an attempt to usurp the prerogatives of men; It also is not about to assert privileges of women or emphasize; it is purely and simply to the requirement that a woman's life, as in a man's space and freedom life should consist of something that is greater than masculinity or femininity " In this spirit, is Harrison's life motto formulated by the sentence. : "I am a human being; nothing human is alien to me, I think. "

Work

Early studies

Harrison's public lectures on Greek art were popular in the 1880s and expresses its unconventional, openly expressed views widely known; also her interest in pagan rituals attracted attention. Your 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 ancient matriarchy in mother law ( 1861). Your first monograph published in 1882 examined mythological representations on Greek vases and developed the thesis that these representations unusual conceptions of myth and rites are to be taken back to the sources and the Odyssey of Homer are only based.

Your later often again aufgelegtes, still important piece Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion appeared in 1903 - a work that applies to that: " Once or twice it happens within a generation, that a research changed an intellectual landscape so pervasive that any forced is, or to check unquestioned assumptions again " Harrison 's approach was to proceed from an analysis of the rite to explanations of the underlying mythical conceptions, according to the principle: ". 's theology facts are harder to detect and truths more difficult to formulate than in the ritual. " therefore, the work begins with an analysis of the most famous Athenian festivals ( Anthesteria, harvest festivals Thargelia, Kallynteria, Plynteria, woman festivals, in which they proved the persistence of numerous archaic motifs Thesmophoria, Arrophoria, Skirophoria, Stenia, Haloa ).

Cultural Evolution

Harrison also commented on the possible applications of the theory of evolution Charles Darwin on cultural studies context. Basically, this was the work of the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor, in particular its 1871 study published in Primitive Culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. Harrison developed a Social Darwinist analysis of the origins of religion and came to the judgment that religions are hostile to reason and dogmatic. She nevertheless defended the cultural necessity of religion. "Every dogma that has a religion produced to date, is most likely wrong, but nevertheless like the religious or mystical attitude be the only way to capture certain things - things that are of utmost importance. Perhaps the contents can not be raised this mystical conception, without being wrong or will fail formulated. Perhaps these levels must be more felt and lived instead of being pronounced and rationally analyzed. Nevertheless, they are true in some way and essential to life. "

Writings

• Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion ( 1903), reprinted several times, At length Princeton: Princeton University Press ( Myth Series), 1991, with an introduction by Robert Ackerman.
• Heresy and Humanity (1911 )
• Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1912, revised version 1927)
• Ancient Art and Ritual (1912 )
• Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion ( 1921)

• Alpha and Omega (1915), AMS Press reprint. New York, 1973 ( ISBN 0-404-56753-3 )