{"id":98,"date":"2004-01-15T03:43:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-15T03:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=98"},"modified":"2012-05-22T16:13:16","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T22:13:16","slug":"98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Inventing Jane Harrison"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>I have received Mary Beard’s<\/a> The Invention of Jane Harrison<\/em>–there goes the evening. (And all hail the interlibrary loan staff for producing it so quickly.)<\/p>\n

Ronald Hutton writes of Harrison in his book The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Savagery and barbarism both frightened and excited her. She admitted that ‘ritual seizes me: a ritual dance, a ritual procession and vestments and lights and banners, moves me as no sermon, no hymn, no picture, no poem has ever moved me.'”<\/p>\n

She was both Puritan and would-be Bacchante in the same body, a fascinating character, described when lecturing at Cambridge as “a tall figure in black drapery, with touches of her favorite green and a string blue Egyptian beads, like a priestess’s rosary.” Hutton suggests that she did much to create the notion of a Great Goddess who preceded the familiar Greek pantheon. He quotes Beard, so now I will see what Beard has to say.<\/p>\n

Beard herself describes the myth of Harrison thus in her preface:<\/p>\n

“Jane Ellen Harrison changed the way we think about the ancient Greeks; she infuriated the academic establishment at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with her uncompromising refusal to play the submissive part; she fell repeatedly and hopelessly in love–usually with entirely unsuitable men, who were also her academic colleagues; she gave some of the most remarkably theatrical lectures that the University of Cambridge has ever seen; in the very male intellectual world of a century ago, she put women academics and women’s colleges (dangerously) on the map.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have received Mary Beard’s The Invention of Jane Harrison–there goes the evening. (And all hail the interlibrary loan staff for producing it so quickly.) Ronald Hutton writes of Harrison in his book The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft: “Savagery and barbarism both frightened and excited her. She admitted that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,263,5],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-classics","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-98","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":102,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=102","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":0},"title":"Some Updates","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"While I wait for some uploading issues to be sorted out, here are follow-ups to two recent posts. First, I mentioned on January 1 the book Nightmare Alley as possibly inspiring or prefiguring Anton LaVey's Church of Satan in the 1960s. I have now read Nightmare Alley, and the short\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":908,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=908","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":1},"title":"Oss Tales: Creating the Archaic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"To watch Oss Tales is to see the difference between a community and a network and the contrast between self-conscious ritual and tradition.If you are interested in the construction of ritual and of community--and in the history of the Pagan movement--you should buy the DVD, which contains three short films:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7020,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7020","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":2},"title":"New Pomegranate Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Issue 16:2 of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies has now been published online, with print copies coming soon. The publisher does charge for articles (but try to see if your library can get them), although book reviews are free downloads. Contents \"Deepening Conversations between Ritual Studies and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"Pomegranate web header","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Pomegranate-web-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Pomegranate-web-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Pomegranate-web-header.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":22,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=22","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":3},"title":"Druids","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 8, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working on a section about American Pagan Druids today. First, let me say that I am so glad that I do not have to do anything on British Druids, since in the UK there are two hundred years' worth of self-proclaimed various Druidic groups of all sorts, from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druidry\"","block_context":{"text":"Druidry","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druidry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=755","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":4},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 7","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A quirky translation of witches' chantsPart 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5, Part 6Stephen Oppenheimer, the anthropologist who combines DNA, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to argue against any \"glorious Celtic heritage\" in England, further argues that Celtic languages were not widespread there before the Roman invasion.His work reminded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8438,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8438","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":5},"title":"The Passing of S\u00e1ra Cunningham","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 29, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Another key figure in the American Craft Scene of the 1960s\u201370s slipped away in December 2016: Lady S\u00e1ra Cunningham(19352016).((Also known as Sara Cunningham Carter.)) It seems like almost everyone profiled in Hans Holzer's 1972 book The New Pagans((A important survey of the American Pagan movement at that time, it predated\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8438#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"Sara Cunningham and dog","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/perfumealchemy.weebly.com\/uploads\/8\/5\/0\/6\/8506707\/ladysaradog2_orig.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4256,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/4256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}