Other editions of book The golden bough: a study in magic and religion

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941). It was first published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906-15, comprised twelve volumes. It was aimed at a broad literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable. It offered a modernist approach to discussing religion, treating it dispassionately as a cultural phenomenon rather than from a theological perspective.Some of the work, especially descriptions of magic, are still held as valid today. His speculation about dying god themes and the Year King have fallen into discredit, and his work on totems has been superseded. Although the worth of its contribution to anthropology will be newly evaluated by each generation, its impact on contemporary European literature was substantial. (Quote from wikipedia.org)About the AuthorSir James George Frazer (1854 - 1941)Sir James George Frazer (January 1, 1854, Glasgow, Scotland - May 7, 1941), was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion.His most famous work, The Golden Bough (1890), documents and details similar magical and religious beliefs across the globe. Frazer posited that human belief progressed through three stages: primitive magic, replaced by religion, in turn replaced by science.He studied at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with honors in Classics (his dissertation would be published years later as The Growth of Plato's Ideal Theory) and remained a Classics Fellow all his life. He went on from Tri

Sir James Frazer covers a lot of mythological ground in his book, and was one of the first to offer good solid rational understanding encompassing myth and legend. One principal area of discussion is what Joseph Campbell calls the "Hero Cycle." Frazer goes to the root of the hero cycle by explaining where and how the cults began. In one example, Frazer describes a fight or challenge where the champion/husband/king is slain by the challenger. The formula requires the hero to defeat the queen's husband/knight/king before he can enter the goddess's chamber. Clearly the test of the kingship relies on his ability to remain strong and worthy as the priestess's consort. This is fully expressed by Frazer in the kingship rites at Nemi:

Published originally in two volumes in 1890, this extraordinary study of primitive myth and magic, collected from sources around the world, led Frazer to identify parallel patterns of ritual, symbols and belief across many centuries and many different cultures. Frazer's learning inspired a whole generation of ethnographers and comparative anthropologists, and had a particularly powerful effect on many other thinkers and writers such as Sigmund Freud, D H Lawrence, Joyce, Yeats and T S Eliot.

This work by Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) is widely considered to be one of the most important early texts in the fields of psychology and anthropology. At the same time, by applying modern methods of comparative ethnography to the classical world, and revealing the superstition and irrationality beneath the surface of the classical culture which had for so long been a model for Western civilisation, it was extremely controversial. Frazer was greatly influenced by E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (also reissued in this series), and by the work of the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, to whom the first edition is dedicated. The twelve-volume third edition, reissued here, was greatly revised and enlarged, and published between 1911 and 1915; the two-volume first edition (1890) is also available in this series. Volumes 10 and 11 (1913) continue to examine taboo behaviour, and consider the role of sunlight and firelight in ritual.

The Golden Bough was originally published in two volumes in 1890. The work was then substantially revised and expanded into twelve volumes, with the final volumes issued in 1915. It is truly a dazzling work of scholarship and learning. After reading this seminal work, one might wonder whether there were any indigenous societies past and present that Sir James did not investigate and cast light on. His mastery of this immense storehouse of ethnological data acted as a much needed corrective to the Eurocentric perspective that was the dominant mode of thinking of his time. Using as its starting point the strange career of the priest of the grove of Nemi, sacred to Diana, who succeeded to his position by the murder of his predecessor and who would in turn be murdered by his successor, The Golden Bough explores myth, magic and ritual the world over, showing how the recurrent themes of the dying and resurrected god permeate the mythic landscape and serve as a paradigmatic constituent of the pre-scientific world view. The Golden Bough was immensely influential in the developing fields of anthropology and ethnology. Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and the Cambridge School all acknowledged their great debt to Frazer. But the work also made its influence felt in wider cultural contexts. It opened pathways in the study of mythology that would be trod upon by Jung, Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves and Levi-Strauss and fired the poetic imaginations of Eliot in The Wasteland, Yeats in Sailing to Byzantium as well as their contemporaries Pound, Lawrence and Auden. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote so much about it that his commentaries were collected and published in book form. Elegantly written, permeated with wise discernment and a delicate sense of irony, The Golden Bough is entirely modern in its outlook. It is a book to be savored, enjoyed and returned to.