Anicient Art And Ritual — Jane Ellen Harrison

The title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even dissonant What have art and ritual to do together The ritualist is to the modern mind a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and ceremonies with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a church or sect The artist on the other hand we think of as free in thought and untrammelled by convention in practice his tendency is towards licence Art and ritual it is quite true have diverged to day but the title of this book is chosen advisedly Its object is to show that these two divergent developments have a common root and that neither can be understood without the other It is at the outset one and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre Such a statement may sound to day paradoxical even irreverent But to the Greek of the sixth fifth and even fourth century B C it would have been a simple truism We shall see this best by following an Athenian to his theatre on the day of the great Spring Festival of Dionysos img src https s3 eu west 1 amazonaws com dia kitadagitim ckeditor_assets pictures 53 content_1_original_original jpg alt height 15 width 15 font size 1 color white font img

The title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even dissonant What have art and ritual to do together The ritualist is to the modern mind a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and ceremonies with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a church or sect The artist on the other hand we think of as free in thought and untrammelled by convention in practice his tendency is towards licence Art and ritual it is quite true have diverged to day but the title of this book is chosen advisedly Its object is to show that these two divergent developments have a common root and that neither can be understood without the other It is at the outset one and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre Such a statement may sound to day paradoxical even irreverent But to the Greek of the sixth fifth and even fourth century B C it would have been a simple truism We shall see this best by following an Athenian to his theatre on the day of the great Spring Festival of Dionysos