Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion

by Jane Ellen Harrison

Jane Harrison examines the festivals of ancient Greek religion to identify the primitive "substratum" of ritual and its persistence in the realm of classical religious observance and literature. In Harrison's preface to this remarkable book, she writes that J. G. Frazer's work had become part and parcel of her "mental furniture" and that of others studying primitive religion. Today, those who write on ancient myth or ritual are bound to say the same about Harrison. Her essential ideas, best developed and most clearly put in the Prolegomena, have never been eclipsed.

Genres: History, Religion, Mythology, Nonfiction, Classics, Theology, Philosophy

720 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September 1850 – 15 April 1928) was a British classical scholar and linguist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, 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 her death in 1903.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_El...

Reviews

[Jonas Persson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keats's lines from "Ode on Melancholy" might have served as an epigraph for this fascinating account:

"Ay, in the very temple of delight / Veiled melancholy has her sovran shrine."

First published in 1903, Jane Harrison's book is a meticulously researched study on Greek ritual. Using contemporary archeological findings and the stringent philological method championed by late 19th century German scholars, she uncovers an archaic sediment of superstition in the festivals performed in honor of the Olympian gods. Descending into the murky cellar of the pantheon she uncovers "ghosts and bogeys" and malignant spirits not entirely put to rest by the gods above. We still tend to think of the Greek belief system as religion - as an ordered theology of business transactions between man and god (I give so that you might give, "do ut des"), but Harrison shows that even in its most Apollonian splendor in the 5th century BC there are still traces of the old order in the religious festivals: superstitious fears, a sense of dread...

This might sound like a Nietzsche rip-off, but Harrison (while surely influenced by "The Birth of Tragedy") carefully avoids the facile Apollo/Dionysus binarisms and exposes the ahistorical underpinnings of Nietzsche's account. She is simply the better classical scholar.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Underlying every god, every figuration of divine power, there moves a penumbral phantasm, a chthonic daemon, a force which weaves together life and death, eros and ecstasy. This figurative formation of anthropomorphic configuration and imagistics on the theological strata is but a replication or a representation of what also occurs on the auto-strata - the figure par excellence being that of the Self which is composed from out of the imposition of constraint and conformity onto the endlessly shifting vertiginousness of the multiplicity of desires and drives which move beneath the fictive facade of the Self as subject - the cosmic self of the well-ordered whole. According to Harrison, these spirits or daemons must be warded away, expurgated from the human order via rituals of riddance, in order to maintain the stability and subsistence not only of the the self, but also of the wider formation of the polis and the cosmos which are in essence molar manifestations or inscriptions of the mythico-typography that engenders and informs the self.

Harrison's major focus is to elucidate the effaced tradition of the Greek society and its founding mythologies - the translation of the divinities and their rites from the nocturnal earth unto the ethereal purity of the noumenal day. This involves the transposition of myth, raising them up to the Olympian heights, purifying them of the earthly taint, the numinous chthonic element, in order to enact the transition into the topos of the Olympian, and later the Orphic, purity. And yet the haunting trace of the earth, its nocturnal shade or bodily taint - be it via the raptures of eros or the enthusiasmos of Dionysus - always remains about the transposed myth. Every myth belies the truth that purity is purely illusory; a cryptic element of a dead god, a dying god, a god of death, ever perseveres and abides, within the purged myth and rights of the rational soul and its attendant self, a haunting phantom of primordial desries and forces which lacerate the self in its finely formed representability. The self and its myth(s) are every infected by a forgotten element which lingers ever in abeyance, playing forth, subversively, through all mythical reenactment.

In this work, which works as an expansive prolegomena or or vestibulary entry into the study of Greek religion, all the while also working to unwork the forgotten mythical nature of the the idea of the human and of the self - our essential mythos, our mythical essence - so as to also work as the foundations for a study of the human itself, qua self, mediated (as it ever is) by the religious thread. Harrison points to how the Homeric myths and their attendant religious conceptions, literary culminations and citations themselves of an even more ancient historical process of mythical transposition involving the translation of chthonic and nocturnal rites relating to the unconscious and a-rational elements of our existence, are the product of the purification of the numinous into the noumenal, aimed towards the human end of producing a representational figure of the human (the anthropomorphic, trans-human ideal of the godly image) which can then be recited, reconstituted, and reinforced via the technological channels of mnemomimesis which are instituted and set to work via the polis, the State. The gods were reformed in Man's own image, so as to act as heavenly supports for the ideality of the human fiction - the typographical origin that is no origin at all - completely fictional in its origin and its role as origin constitutionary.

Seeking, then, a genealogical unworking of this mythico-textual translation and transposition, working back to the primordial origins which undergird not only the Greek polis and its form of life, but also even the self and the auto-cosmic ordering of constitutional narrative technology. Within the unfolding of the work, Harrison addresses a plethora of important themes that weave their way through the transformation of the mythical topography of Greek religiosity, from the pharmakon and ritual sacrifice, to the continually shifting and revolving role that the figure of Dionysus played in the understanding of sacrality and the human-divine divide, and how such elements and the practices and meanings that accrue around and through them, are transformed in accordance with the mythical narratives that explain and define them, and thus also the typographic orders that are reinscribed along with the shifting understanding of the human self as rational being, and their supposed place in the world-order (rightful or not).

Underlying the entire account of this voluminous text is the attempt to delve into and divulge the impulsive forces that work themselves out through life and death - those daemonic desires and fears - and are at the root of our existence; to try to view them in the obscure light of the ancient peoples who acted in relation to these forces, before they were overwritten and reinscribed by the theological narratives of the Olympian order, with its focus on reason as the ultimate aspect and guiding principle of the human being - as our essential faculty or power, as the ultimate ground of the self. Precluding and constraining the phantasmal drives and the daemonic relations that antedate reason and are constantly working to unwork its static works, the Olympians, with their imposition and instatement of the grand Metaphysical narrative, sought to wipe clean, to purify, the theological life of the human being. But the primordiality of such forces cannot so easily be forgotten - just as Dionysus denied and overcame Pentheus, this late mythical narrative touches upon a ground that cannot be forgotten - a ground that falls back ever into an abyssal forgetting that evinces an immemorial lack of memory, that effaces every attempt at remembrance and representation. Through the effacement of the Olympian myth - casting into Lethe that which founds itself through mnemotechnics and mnemomimesis - perhaps we may move closer to a return, to touch upon that which moves at the heart of our religious being - that spiritual or daemonic chaos, that night of desirous forces, phantasmically simulated under the figures and names of Eros and Dionysus, amongst others, which connects us back (through the detour of an infinite disconnect) to the earth to which we ever return through death. For the death which precedes all life, which the light of Olympian life and Orphic tradition sought to reinscribe and reinstitute under the mythical figure of metempsychosis, ever awaits our return. Perhaps through an engagement with an immemorial forgetting, an effacement of memory and metaphysics, and all the threads of auto-constitution that are bound up with its narrative history, we might achieve a return unto our abyssal roots - a deeper understanding (outside of the topological space of understanding and reason) of our existence as bare life, prior to all mythico-typographic inscription and institutionalization.

Through this text there speaks the silent message of the silent - how the essential, the primordial, is ever effaced, committed to oblivion (its essence being nothing but this very effacement) - to the cryptic (non-)space of death; the space of the chthonic spirits which effacement runs through; the effacing space of dissolution encapsulated by an oblivescence at the heart of our (non-)being.

This work, as touched on before, remains a prolegomena, a preface or a pre-word, not only for the study of Greek religion, but also for the study of our own existence as divine participants in the chaotic wending that is the unworking working out of life and death int heir endlessly intertwining motions. It remains, in a fashion a la Nietzsche (this work being everywhere suffused with elements or hints of The Birth of Tragedy), a fundamental No which precedes the exigency of the primal or primoridal Yes.

[Gavin White · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Andrew said "They don't write 'em like this anymore". How true!
A brilliant study of Greek religion that was a real eye-opener for me. I'd always been put off the Classical world as far too stuffy, erudite and frankly conceited. Reading Harrison's study changed my whole perspective on the subject. While there are huge chunks of this 682 page epic that I have hardly touched; there are several other chapters that I have poured over time and again. Chapter five on 'the demonology of ghosts, sprites and bogeys' is my favourite by far but the chapter on 'the making of a goddess' is not far behind.
Other reviewers have more than adequately described Harrison's methods and the foundation it provides for the study of ancient Greek cultures. I'd just like to say that it taught me an awful lot about imagery and its relationship to written texts. Behind the cultured gloss of Classical myth and religion lays a far more primitive layer of ritual and another worldview entirely. The 177 black-and-white line drawings are another bonus.

[tumulus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1903, this book is the crowning achievement of Harrison's scholarship and remains a foundational mythographic text. It deals with underpinning the cultural predecessors of Greek religion and tracing its evolution and synthesis. Which is quite a Herculean task given the paucity of evidence and the broadness of the question.

When Harrison was writing this, mythography was at its apogee, in so small part due to the seminal work of Gilbert Murray in the field. The presence of Athena, Artemis, and a myriad other female deities in a culture as male-worshipping as the Greeks was always perplexing, with their origins eventually being attributed to the religious syncretism of matriarchal religions from Minoan Crete and the eastern Mediterranean. This book attempts to give a similar treatment to all other facets of Greek religion.

Harrison's dissertation rests on attributing later practices, as originating from an antecedent fear of spirits. Pre-Greek religions were based primarily on the fear and placation of ghosts, these nameless entities slowly morphed into named deities, all of which gradually diverged and took on particular characteristics. The practices and rites of Orphics, the Dionysiac cult, are dealt with in detail and form the evidential basis of this thesis - most of which is supplied by copious amounts of examination of art and literature. Matriarchial origins of the Olympic pantheon are also posited and explored - with Harrison notably being the first to do so.

Harrison displays her usual breathtaking erudition which makes even novel and bizarre ideas sound obvious and trivial. It's this kind of lucid and comprehensible writing that makes you wonder what on earth happened to modern scholarship.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, originally published in 1903, is the best thing I've found on Greek mythology or Greek attitudes to things of the spirit generally.

I forget exactly what prompted me to get it, probably favorable mention of it in some other book, but in July 2010 I got myself a used copy of the stout Meridian Books paperback published in 1955. An imposing tome of 682 pages, it sat on my shelves until just 5 months ago. At that time I had hit, as I occasionally do, a gap in my reading, and I came down to the "library" (a carpeted storeroom housing our freezer and 3 Ikea Billy bookcases) to prowl for something of interest. I finally decided to give the Prolegomena a chance.

I was immediately impressed with the author's perceptiveness, authority, and approach. The book's 12 chapters take one on a journey from "chthonic rituals" of "ghosts and sprites" to an extended discussion of Orphism, which occupies the last 4 chapters. And what a journey it is: I felt that all kinds of puzzles and mysteries and seeming inconsistencies of Greek mythology resolved and fell into place. The fascinating thing about this book is that it has very little to do with what I had always thought of as Greek religion, which was a religion centered on the familiar gods of Olympus. Jane Harrison occasionally mentions these gods in passing, but her interest is in all the religious phenomena that lay in the penumbra of the spotlight pointed on Olympus by Homer and other classical authors. Her interest is in tracing the development of Greek religion from its most primitive manifestations up to its most sophisticated ones. The Olympian gods formed part of that story, but only a part, and seemingly, as this author tells it, by no means the largest part.

I was already aware that ancient Greek religion had been formed by a collision between the prehistoric matriarchal system of the ancient inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula and Crete and the patriarchal invaders who swept down from the north and east. But Harrison shows how the deepest layers of Greek religion need to be sought in the beliefs and behaviors of primitive people who fear, above all, ghosts. Much of what develops into what we call religion begins with the riddance and placation of the souls of the dead, who, when angry, vengeful, or envious, can bring terrible misfortune to those still living. Long before there is anything so definite and well characterized as a personal god, there are countless invisible sprites--the Keres of ancient Greece--who affect the human world for good and ill, and many of Greece's famous festivals and rituals had their origins in repelling, expelling, and appeasing these ghostly figures.

Harrison shows how goddesses and gods eventually emerged from these primitive spirits, and how these gods eventually became clearly distinguished and named--even if with a number of different names. And she shows how these two eventually gave way to a higher, more mystical kind of religious experience and practice that gained the name Orphism. Some investigators have believed that Orpheus was a god, but Harrison dismisses this view. To her it's clear that Orpheus was a man, a revealer and reformer who created a mystical new religion inspired by the worship of Dionysos and injecting new esoteric meaning into primitive rites.

Much of the author's argument is based on the interpretation of ancient Greek art: vases, bowls, funerary monuments. The book is richly illustrated with black-and-white reproductions of these, and Harrison's depth of knowledge of these artifacts is most impressive. She knows what she's talking about.

The prose itself is very readable. Harrison writes with passion and admiration, even as she does not hesitate to criticize and pass judgment on ancient practices and authors when they reveal signs of savagery or confusion. She is quick and punctilious to acknowledge the work of other scholars, but unafraid of noting when she disagrees with them or rejects their ideas. She is also well versed in the ancient authors and treats them in much the same way; she relies on them, but is aware of their personal shortcomings. There are a couple of interesting footnotes too in which she admits that some theory of her own, already appearing earlier in the book, is in error! Read carefully.

In all, a thoroughly excellent book. If you're new to ancient Greek mythology and religion, then you probably should not start here. Acquaint yourself with the Greek myths and festivals, and then reach for this book. You start to see how all those various strange myths start to make sense; they are expressions of a few guiding principles that underlie their formation.

For us in the West, Greek mythology is the mythology; when we talk about "myths," often we mean Greek myths. Our culture is shot through with them; our modern stories are based on them and are filled with allusions to their events. For example, I'm currently reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, published in 1995, and I suddenly realized that some of the action was based on the Oedipus myth. But those myths are the tip of an iceberg, and to appreciate them fully one should have a sense of the shape and depth of the berg that lies below the waterline. Jane Harrison's book examines the underwater part of that iceberg, and it's illuminating indeed.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Succulently arrayed with juicy intellectual tid-bits, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion is like a bunch of chilled, oh-so delicious grapes: rewarding instantaneously and beneficent in effect after digestion. So, while not an easy read by any stretch, Jane Ellen Harrison's magnum opus is a read well worth the effort, for it outlines in detail the religion of Ancient Greece. Focusing especially on Demeter/Persephone, Dionysus, and, that enigmatic of all figures, Orpheus, Harrison's book leaves you satiated and complete, as if visited by that dark god of the vine. One can only hope to bring Harrison's and Dionysus's spirit to today's often mechanized, soul-less society. After reading this book, you feel half way there already!

[Midori]

I suppose that it is a classical but the author's obsession with purification rites and her will to interprete the Attic festivals as ritual ceremonies to ward off the unleashed evils of nature have, in many instances, pushed the available evidence too much so to fit to the theories.

[Natajia · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's either senseless or didn't translate well to my Kindle.

[r0b · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Lithuanians in the Middle Ages are said to have made their beer over-night and drunk it next morning. Beer of this primitive kind was best sucked up through a pipe."
I bet!
"the characteristic essence of the worship of Dionysos...was intoxication...a divine madness." cf William James discussion of similar ideas in his Varieties of Religious Experience.
I skim read large sections but this one on intoxication in Harrison's book, along with most of the sections on Orpheus and Aristophanes were probably my favourite.

[Allen]

one of the "real" scholars who influenced Olson.

[Juliane Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. That is all.

[Velma]

From neighbor's free box! Sure is great living in a college town; the discards are often of an academic nature.

[Leia Penina]

#achievementunlocked