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| − | '''Jane Ellen Harrison''' ([[1950]] [[September 9]] – [[1928]] [[April 5]]) was a ground-breaking [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|British]] [[classics|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]] [[archaeology|archaeological]] discoveries to the interpretation of [[Greek religion]] in ways that have become standard.
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| − | ==Personal life==
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| − | Harrison was born in [[Yorkshire]], [[England]] 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 College|Newnham]], the progressive, recently-established college for women at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]]. She 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]].
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| − | ===Suffragette===
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| − | Harrison was, at least [[ideologically]], a moderate [[suffragette]] of the early [[feminist movement]]. 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.")
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| − | ==Scholarship==
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| − | Harrison began formal study at [[Cheltenham Ladies' College]], 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 [[Durham College]] 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.
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| − | ===Early Work===
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| − | In her time, Harrison was renowned for her public lectures on [[Ancient Greek art|Greek art]] and for her unconventional and outspoken views. Her lectures on Greek art, usually given to wealthy, predominantly female audiences, were immensely popular in the [[1880s]], and her unorthodox fascination with [[Paganism|pagan folk]] rituals often stirred up gossip.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Harrison was emancipated intellectually by a reading of [[David Friedrich Strauss]]'s historical criticism of the life of [[Jesus]], and [[Johann Jakob Bachofen]]'s ''Mutterrecht'' (1861), the seminal analysis of [[matriarchy]] in [[ancient history|antiquity]].{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Harrison's first monograph, in 1882, drew on the thesis that both [[Homer]]'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 offereed some unusual commentaries on myth and ritual.
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| − | Her approach in her great work, ''Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion'' (1903)<ref>"Once or twice in a generation a work of scholarship will alter an intellectual landscape so profoundly, that everyone is required to re-examine normally unexamined assumptions," Robert Ackerman begins his ''Introduction'' to the Princeton University Press reprint, 1991.</ref>, 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 ferstivals: [[Anthesteria]], harvest festivals [[Thargelia]], Kallynteria, Plynteria, and the women's festivals, in which she detected many primitive survivals, [[Thesmophoria]], Arrophoria, Skirophoria, Stenia and Haloa.
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| − | ===Cultural Evolution (or Social Darwinism)===
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| − | Harrison alluded to and commented on the cultural applications of [[Charles Darwin]]'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 [[Social Darwinism|socially Darwinian]] analysis of the [[origins of religion]], Harrison admitted that religions are anti-intellectual and [[dogma]]tic, yet she defended the cultural necessity of religion. In her essay ''The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion'' (circa 1915), 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'')
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| − | ==Later life==
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| − | [[World War I]] 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 publishings, and [[pacifism|pacifist]] leanings isolated her. Upon retiring (in 1922), Harrison briefly lived in [[Paris]], but she returned to [[London]] when her health began to fail.
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| − | ==Notes==
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| − | <references/>
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| − | ==Bibliography==
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| − | ===Greek Topics===
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| − | Books on the anthropological search for the origins of Greek religion and mythology, include:
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| − | *''[[Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion]]'' (1903)
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| − | *''[[Heresy and Humanity]]'' (1911)
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| − | *''[[Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion]]'' (1912, revised 1927)
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| − | *''[[Ancient Art and Ritual]]'' (1912+)
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| − | *''[[Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion]]'' (1921)
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| − | ===Essays and Reflections===
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| − | *''[[Alpha and Omega (Harrison)|Alpha and Omega]]'' (1915)
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| − | *''[[Reminiscences of a Student's Life]]'' (1925)
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| − | ===See also===
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| − | * [[history of feminism]]
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| − | ==External links==
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| − | *[http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/h/harrison_j_e.shtml Klaus-Gunther Wesseling's brief biography of Harrison], densely packed with information; extensive references (German)
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| − | *[http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F2911%2FPP%20Harrison Newnham College Archives of Jane Ellen Harrison] holds her personal correspondence; brief biography
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| − | *[http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=ss&sText=jane+harrison&LinkID=mp02065&rNo=0&role=sit ''Jane Harrison'' by Theo van Rysselberghe] at the NPG
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| − | *{{gutenberg author|id=Jane_Ellen_Harrison|name=Jane Ellen Harrison}}
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| − | *[http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/eos/eos_title.pl?callnum=BL781.H32 ''Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion'' by Jane Ellen Harrison, 1912] - online copy at the University of Chicago Library
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| − | ==References==
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| − | *Harrison, Jane Ellen. ''Alpha and Omega''. AMS Press: New York, 1973. (ISBN 0-404-56753-3)
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| − | *Harrison, Jane Ellen. ''Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion'' (1903) 1991 (Princeton: Princeton University Press Mythos series). The ''Introduction'' by Robert Ackerman is the best easily available brief overview of Harrison's career.
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| − | *Peacock, Sandra J. ''Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self''. Halliday Lithograph Corp.: West Hanover, MA. 1988. (ISBN 0-300-04128-4)
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| − | *Robinson, Annabel. ''The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-19-924233-X). The first substantial biography, with extensive quotes from personal letters.
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| − | *Stewart, Jessie G.''Jane Ellen Harrison: a Portrait from Letters'' 1959. A memoir based on her voluminous correspondence with [[Gilbert Murray]].
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| − | {{lgbt|Jane Ellen Harrison}}
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| − | [[Category:English classical scholars]]
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| − | [[Category:People from Yorkshire]]
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| − | [[Category:British classical scholars]]
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| − | [[Category:Mythographers]]
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| − | [[Category:English feminists]]
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| − | [[Category:Feminist writers]]
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| − | [[Category:Bisexual writers]]
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| − | [[Category:Bloomsbury Group]]
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| − | [[Category:English essayists]]
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| − | [[Category:Rhetoricians]]
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| − | [[Category:Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge]]
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| − | [[Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom]]
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| − | [[Category:LGBT people from England]]
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| − | [[Category:Feminism]]
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