Antiquarian Magic: Jane Harrison’s Ritual Theory and Hope Mirrlees’s Antiquarianism in Paris

Abstract

This chapter considers how Hope Mirrlees’s unique brand of antiquarianism harnesses Jane Harrison’s ritual theory of art. A focus on embodied mystical experience, connecting the present to the past, emerges. This focus is present in Mirrlees’s Paris (1920). Drawing on anthropological and classical tropes from Harrison’s theory, the poem enacts a ritual aimed at effecting cultural and religious regeneration in the wake of the Great War, but in a way that mirrors Mirrlees’s formulation of the object of antiquarianism. Paris not only represents a vivid spiritual experience, but also seeks to impart it to future readers in the way it captures an epochal moment in history and through its performative emphasis on the materiality of the text, creating a mystical artefact of the poem itself.