The Golden Bough

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SUBJECT MATTER

''The Golden Bough'' attempts to define what almost all primitive religions share with each other, and with modern religions such as in a sacred wood, who was ritually murdered by his successor:
:"When I first put pen to paper to write ''The Golden Bough'' I had no conception of the magnitude of the voyage on which I was embarking; I thought only to explain a single rule of an ancient Italian priesthood." (''Aftermath'' p vi)

The title was taken from an incident in the and the Sibyl present the golden bough to the gatekeeper of Hades to gain admission.

RECEPTION

The book scandalized the public upon its first publication, because it included the Christian story of Jesus in its comparative study, thus inviting an agnostic reading of the Lamb Of God as a relic of a pagan religion. Frazer removed his analysis of the Crucifixion to a speculative appendix for the third edition, and it was entirely missing from the single-volume abridged edition.

Parts of the book, most notably its discussion of the Symbolism of Magic and its elucidation of the concept of Sympathetic Magic , remain accepted by scholars today. The larger thesis about dying and reviving gods has not fared as well in the world of Anthropology and Comparative Religion ; most contemporary anthropologists have concluded that Frazer overinterpreted his evidence to fit it into the system.

Frazer often reveals a confidence in a linear intellectual progress of mankind to a superior position which anthropologists no longer share. As Cultural Anthropology has expanded and deepened, many individual conclusions of Frazer's have required revision within local and historical cultural contexts. Modern anthropologists conclude that Frazer placed too much weight on what he called "the essential similarity of man's chief wants everywhere and at all times" (ch. lxix).

William Butler Yeats , James Joyce , D. H. Lawrence , T. S. Eliot (in '' The Waste Land ''), Robert Graves (see '' The White Goddess ''), Ezra Pound , Mary Renault , Joseph Campbell , and Camille Paglia are but a few authors deeply influenced by ''The Golden Bough''. Its literary impact has given it continued life even as its direct influence in anthropology has waned.

QUOTATIONS

: "If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, ''Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus'' everywhere, and by all" - ed. , as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility." (Chapter 4, "".)

: "The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid." (Chapter 21, "".)

EDITIONS OF ''THE GOLDEN BOUGH''

First edition, 2 vols., 1890.

Second edition, 3 vols., 1900.

Third edition, 12 vols., 1906-15. The last volume (1915) is an index.

Abridged edition, 1 vol., 1922. Lady Frazer is thought to have largely compiled this edition, which abridges Frazer's references to Christianity.

''Aftermath : A supplement to the golden Bough'', 1937

New abridged edition, edited by Robert Fraser for Oxford University Press, 1994. It restores the material on Christianity purged in the first abridgement. ISBN 0-19-282934-3

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ''THE GOLDEN BOUGH''

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein returned time and again to ''The Golden Bough'', often enough that his commentaries have been compiled as "Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough," edited by Rush Rhees, and originally published in 1967, with the English edition following in 1971. {Link without Title} .

Some modern criticism sets Frazer in a broader context of the History Of Ideas :

Ackerman, Robert. 2002. ''The Myth and Ritual School: J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists'' (Theorists of Myth) ISBN 0415939631 The myth and ritual school includes scholars Jane Harrison , Gilbert Murray , F.M. Cornford , and A.B. Cook , who were connecting the new discipline of myth theory and anthropology with the traditional literary classics at the end of the 19th century.

Fraser, Robert. 1990. ''The Making of The Golden Bough : The Origins and Growth of an Argument'' (Macmillan, 1990; re-issued Palgrave 2001)

REFERENCES IN POPULAR CULTURE

"The Golden Bough" is referenced in the '' created by Silicon Knights .

In the Anime '' Eureka 7 '', two characters are repeatedly seen reading ''The Golden Bough''.

Jim Morrison used the phrases "Not to touch the Earth/Not to see the Sun" (taken from The Golden Bough's table of contents) in his The Doors song "Not to Touch the Earth".

''The Golden Bough'' is seen in the film '' Apocalypse Now '' as a book on the stack of reading material for Colonel Kurtz, along with Jessie Weston 's '' From Ritual To Romance ''.

Information from 'The Golden Bough' was used extensively for the 1973 film about pagan sacrifice, '' The Wicker Man ''.

''The Golden Bough'' is both directly referenced in and a partial framework for the plot structure of the Diana Wynne Jones novel '' Fire And Hemlock ''.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text copies of the 1922 edition:

The Golden Bough A Study Of Magic and Religion

HTML version of ''The Golden Bough''

Information About

The Golden Bough