The Golden Bough

by Frazer, J. G.

• ISBN13: 9781108047302
• ISBN10: 1108047300
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-30
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

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. Volume 3 (1911) is concerned with the concept of taboo, and its presence in all religious systems.

Table of Contents

Preface

Preface to the first edition

Preface to the second edition

The king of the wood

Priestly kings

Sympathetic magic

Magic and religion

The magical control of the weather

Magicians as kings

Incarnate human gods

Appendix

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.