JANE ELLEN HARRISON

BIRTH AND DEATH

Birth: 9/9/1850     Death: 4/15/1928

OCCUPATION

scientist

BIOGRAPHY SUMMARY

Jane Ellen Harrison was a British classical scholar and linguist. With Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, Harrison is one of the founders of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard. She has also been credited with being the first woman to obtain a post in England as a career academic. Harrison argued for women's suffrage but thought she would never want to vote herself. Ellen Wordsworth Crofts, later second wife of Sir Francis Darwin, was Jane Harrison's best friend from her student days at Newnham, and during the period from 1898 to Ellen's death in 1903. The depth and influence of Harrison's friendship with Eugénie Sellers Strong—ended by a dramatic breech in the 1890s—is explored in a monograph by Mary Beard: after their breakup Sellers became an influential authority on the material vulture of imperial, while Harrison's work dug deeper and deeper into the primitive ritual origins of Greek drama. Though moving in different directions chronologically, in terms of their focus, the women appear otherwise as doppelgängers of one another in their concerns, style and characteristic forms of argument deriving from an approach that became known as classical anthropology. Harrison's Prolegomena to Greek Religion had a compelling and inspirational impact on the later artworks of T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Hilda Doolittle and her scholarly legerdemain was formative to the group of classicists known as the Cambridge ritualists.

NOTABLE WORK

WHY THEY MATTER

Jane Ellen Harrison was a pioneering figure in the field of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology, utilizing 19th-century archaeological discoveries to interpret ancient Greek religion in innovative ways. She was not only one of the founders of this field but also the first woman to obtain a post in England as a 'career academic', breaking barriers and influencing subsequent generations of scholars and artists through her work. Her influential friendships and intellectual pursuits, including her focus on the primitive ritual origins of Greek drama, left a lasting impact on classical anthropology and the works of renowned figures like T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Hilda Doolittle.

FAMOUS QUOTE

Womenquawomen may remain, for the better continuance of life, subject to men, women as human beings demand to live as well as to continue life. To live effectively they must learn to know the world through and through, in order that, while side by side with men, they may fashion life to their common good.Homo Sum. Being a Letter to an Anti-Suffragist from an Anthropologist, 1900, p. 30

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