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  • Chapter 24 - Beyond Raglan’s Hero: Ellison’s Ritualist Influences

  • from Part III - Literary and Critical Contexts
  • Edited by Paul Devlin, United States Merchant Marine Academy, New York
  • Book:
    Ralph Ellison in Context
    Published online:
    14 January 2022
    Print publication:
    02 December 2021, pp 260-269

  • Summary

    Scholars have long recognized the influence of the Cambridge Ritualists (the “myth and ritual school”) on Ralph Ellison’s life and work. Primarily, given Ellison’s many statements regarding the birth of Invisible Man, this has been limited to discussions of Ellison’s use of Lord Raglan’s The Hero. However, archival research in Ellison’s collected papers and preserved library reveals a much more complex portrait of Ellison’s reading of the Ritualists. In this chapter, I draw on this archival evidence to reconstruct the significant insights that Ellison drew from Raglan (and not just The Hero), Jane Harrison, George Thomson, and A. M. Hocart.