Jane Ellen Harrison ( Eng. Jane Ellen Harrison ; September 9, 1850 - April 15, 1928 ) - British antiquarian , linguist , feminist . Harrison, along with Karl Kereny and Walter Burkert , was one of the scientists who initiated modern research in the field of Greek mythology . She used the archaeological finds of the 19th century to interpret the Greek religion , using methods that later became standard. A modern anticographer and biographer Harrison Mary Bird calls her "in some way ... the first woman — a professional [university] scientist in the country." [7]
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Personal Life
Jane Ellen Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire , and received her primary education as a governess. She studied German , Latin , Greek , Hebrew . In the future, this list expanded to approximately sixteen languages, including Russian . Harrison spent most of her professional life at Newnham, a progressive, newly founded college for women in Cambridge . One of her students was a writer and poetess Hope Mirirlize ; they lived together from 1913 until Harrison’s death. [eight]
Harrison knew Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Pater , was associated with the Bloomsbury Group , which included Virginia Woolf (who was a close friend of Harrison [9] ), Lytton Streycha , Clive Bell, and Roger Fry . Together with Gilbert Murray , F. M. Cornford, and A. B. Cook, she was a member of the group known as Cambridge Ritualists ; members of this group were interested in the application of anthropology and ethnography to the study of ancient art and rituals.
Harrison was, at least ideologically, a moderate suffragette . Instead of supporting this movement through protest, Harrison used anthropology to defend women's suffrage. In a response to anti-suffusionist criticism, Harrison demonstrates his convictions: “[The women's movement] is not an attempt to appropriate the prerogatives of men as sex; it is not even an attempt to establish the privileges of women as sex; it is only the need that in the life of women, as in the life of men, there is a place and freedom for something greater than both male and female - for the human. ” [10] In this question Harrison’s motto was the words of Terence : “homo sum; humani nihil mihi alienum est " (" I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me ").
Scientific Activities
Harrison began her formal education at Sheltenham Ladies' College, where she received a certificate of higher education. In 1874, she continued her study of classical philology at Newnham College , University of Cambridge . For her early work, Harrison received two honorary doctoral degrees at the University of Aberdeen in 1895 and at the University of Durham in 1897. This recognition of her academic merit gave Harrison the opportunity to return to Newnham College as a lecturer in 1898; retired in 1922.
Early work
The first monograph by Harrison, published in 1882, was based on the thesis that, in Homer 's Odyssey and in the motifs of Greek vase painting , shared deep mythological sources were used, and on the opinion that was not previously popular in classical archeology, the Vasopistus repertoire can give new information about myths and rituals.
Harrison's approach to one of her most famous works, Introduction to the Study of Greek Religion ( Eng. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , 1903) [11] is based on the movement from ritual to the myth inspired by him: "In theology, it is harder to find the facts, the truth harder to formulate than in rituals. " [12] She analyzes in the book the well-known Greek festivals: Anfesteria , Targelia , Callinteria , Plintery , women's festivals, in which she discovered many primitive remnants, Tesmoforiya , Arreforiya , Skyrophoria , Stenia , Galoi .
Cultural Evolution and Social Darwinism
Harrison also explored the cultural application of Charles Darwin’s theory. Harrison and her generation were influenced by anthropologist Edward Burnett Taylor , who is considered the father of an evolutionary theory of cultural development , especially his work in 1871, "Primitive Culture: Studies on the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Customs" ( eng. Primitive Culture: researches into development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom ). Having analyzed the origin of religion from the point of view of social Darwinism , Harrison came to the conclusion that religiosity is anti-intellectual and dogmatic , but religion and mysticism are a cultural necessity. In the essay “ The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion ” ( The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion , 1909), Harrison concluded: “Each of the dogmatic religions created so far is probably wrong, but in spite of all this, religious or mystical a state of mind may be the only way to understand certain things, and the importance of this is enormous. It is also possible that the content of this mystical understanding cannot be expressed through language without distortion, that it should be felt and lived, not uttered and intellectually analyzed; and somehow it is true and necessary for life. " [13]
Further life
World War I made a profound change in Harrison’s life. After the war, she never again visited Italy and Greece. For the most part she worked on reviews and new editions of previous publications; pacifist beliefs caused her isolation. After retiring in 1922, she lived for some time in Paris with Mirirlize , but then they returned to London, where Harrison died of leukemia in 1928.
Bibliography
Works related to Greece
- Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903, new revisions in 1908, 1922)
- Heresy and Humanity (1911)
- Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1912, a new edition in 1927)
- Ancient Art and Ritual (1912+)
- Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921)
Essays and Reflections
- Alpha and Omega (1915)
Notes
- 2 1 2 3 4 Blend V. , Grundy I. , Clements P. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English - 1990. - P. 494.
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 118975048 // General Regulatory Control (GND) - 2012—2016.
- ↑ 1 2 BNF ID : 2011 open data platform .
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ FemBio
- 2 1 2 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography / C. Matthew - Oxford : OUP , 2004.
- ↑ Mary Beard "Living with Jane Harrison" Archived May 27, 2009. A Don's Life blog, The Times website, May 22, 2009.
- ↑ Douglas A. Anderson. Introduction. Lud-in-the-mist . By Hope Mirrlees. Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Press ( ISBN 978-1-59360-041-9 ), 2005. 9.
- ↑ Jean Mills. Goddesses and Ghosts: Virginia Woolf and Jane Ellen Harrison. - City University of New York, 2007. - 217 p. - ISBN 9780549267904 .
- ↑ Alpha and Omega , 84-85
- ↑ “Once or twice a generation, a scientific work emerges that changes the intellectual landscape so deeply that everyone needs to revise commonly accepted assumptions,” Robert Ackerman writes in his 1991 introduction to the reprint of Princeton University Press.
- Pro Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p.163
- ↑ Alpha and Omega , 177
Literature
- Harrison, Jane Ellen. Alpha and Omega . AMS Press: New York, 1973. ( ISBN 0-404-56753-3 )
- Harrison, Jane Ellen. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) 1991 (Princeton: Princeton University Press Mythos series). Robert Ackerman's "Introduction" is the best overview of Harrison’s career.
- Peacock, Sandra J. Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self . Halliday Lithograph Corp .: West Hanover, MA. 1988. ( ISBN 0-300-04128-4 )
- Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Ellen Harrison . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 ( ISBN 0-19-924233-X ). The first detailed biography with extensive quotes from personal correspondence.
- 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 biography based on a voluminous correspondence between Harrison and Gilbert Murray.
Links
- Newnham College Archives of Jane Ellen Harrison - personal correspondence, brief biography
- Works by Jane Ellen Harrison in the Gutenberg Project
- Essays by Harrison at Quotidiana.org
- Works by Jane Ellen Harrison at the Internet Archive
- The Origins of Greek Religion by Jane Ellen Harrison, 1912 - online 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)