Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Golden Bough by James George Frazer ISBN: 0-684-82630-5 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: July, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An Indispensable resource
Comment: Although it is trendy to slam The Golden Bough for its author's assumptions, nothing can take away the magnitude of the scholarship or the impact of the text. It was the first time any work of religious anthropology had made any sort of cultural impact, and its signifigance to artists of the Jazz Age and later decades is tantamount. Picasso's work is filled with images from The Golden Bough, and all of Hemingway's obsession with bulls and bullfights is explained by reading Frazer.
The work itself is an exhaustive reference for thousands of relgious ceremonies around the world, and their interrelated symbolism and meaning. Flying directly in the face of the historical philosophies of parallel, isolated cultural development in vogue in the 19th century, the book shows that human spiritual belief orbits around the same ideas, needs and urges across the planet and through the ages. The symbolism of worship in Iron Age Norway is the same as Middle Ages Mirconesia, with all the interconnectedness this implies.
It is very easy to work around the author's 19th century cultural assumptions and glean the information. Reading The Golden Bough, along with Joseph Campbell, will give a very good baseline for any historical religious study. Frazer's work also dovetails beautifully with Jung's study of archetypal symbols. The combination of the two wil go a long way towards sorting out the symbolism in any 20th Century literature.
Rating: 5
Summary: Golden Bough is essential reading for any thinking person
Comment: The Golden Bough is a classic in the truest sense of the word. Well-written, compendious in its scholarship, profound in its influence, shocking in its implications, Frazer has penned one of mankind's great unread books. With the works of Darwin and Hubble, Frazer's hefty tome quietly demolishes traditional notions of the world and our place within it. His introductory study of magic in primitive societies, many sadly vanished in the intervening century, is fascinating reading for anyone interested in Wicca, the New Age, or the Occult. Frazer's scope then expands voluminously, to include such topics as totemism, divine kingship, tree worship, and, most significantly, dying and reviving gods. Without ever mentioning Jesus specifically, Frazer places him squarely in the midst of a long procession of resurrected Middle Eastern gods that include Osiris, Tammuz, Dionysus, and Attis, demonstrating amply that the Christ myth is a fairly typical example of the primitive religio! us beliefs characteristic of that locale and period. While hardly a quick read (Frazer's dignified style does require some self-acclimatization after the passage of nine undignified decades), The Golden Bough rewards both the careful sequential reading and the occasional random foray. Frazer's many thousands of examples of odd and provocative customs remain fascinating even as scholarly interpretation of their significance evolves. All in all, a book of which no genuine intellectual, and certainly no born-again Christian, can afford to be ignorant.
Rating: 5
Summary: For Myth and Anthropology, start here
Comment: This is Frazer's own abridgement of a mere 750 pages. The original work is 12 volumes. I've started in my lunch hour writing a few reviews here on Amazon of things which either really struck me deeply, or which I feel are underrated or overrated... or which I happen to have read recently and therefore are fresh in my mind. This one is of the deep-striking, perspective-altering kind.
The book feels to me somehow to be the most central work on mythology, ritual or anthropology that I have read. The reason for this, I think, is that Frazer had a clear vision of some central Fact which he needed to convey. The book is therefore very well organized, doesn't lose its focus amid the masses of data -- and I mean masses of data -- which he brings to bear. And this Fact which he conveys is not really about something external to man -- even something external which man has created; it is about something internal and fundamental to man. Its fundamental point concerns a changeless Fact about the nature of things, more than any myriad of facts -- however amazing -- which have resulted from historical circumstance.
After 100 or so pages, I was thinking, "All right already, I get the point about sympathetic magic and a dead guy in a tree. When's the next topic?" But he just kept going on, and about 300 pages into the book, I felt a sort of chill in the base of my spine... maybe I hadn't gotten it about the dead guy in the tree... and then Frazer just keeps going on and on and on for another 450 pages.
The sheer volume of data, and the effectiveness with which it is organized somehow sunk through. Had I read a yet more abridged volume, I might not have been left with this stunned sense of the unbelievable pervasiveness and power of this one central Myth which runs through all humanity.
There's a lot more one could write about that Myth and the evolution of religions and consequently societies, but I suppose I'll leave that to Frazer. However, for those who have been struck by the Myth or the Dream, I would say that this is the place to start... more than Freud, Jung, Campbell or Bulfinch... all of which should be read at some point. I feel like what Frazer presents is fact more than a perspective or theory, which is why I wish I had read it prior to Freud or Jung. I read Joseph Campbell over and over more than Frazer, but his scholarly works are not as easy to penetrate or as unified as are Frazer's. And Bulfinch and the like collect the tales without penetrating them particularly, though I find Bulfinch a very helpful reference when I need to look things up.
 |
Title: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth by Robert Graves ISBN: 0374504938 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: July, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
 |
Title: From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston ISBN: 0486296806 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
 |
Title: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Mythos Books) by Joseph Campbell ISBN: 0691017840 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 1972 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: Man and His Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung ISBN: 0440351839 Publisher: Laure Leaf Pub. Date: 15 August, 1968 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
 |
Title: The Greek Myths by Robert Graves ISBN: 0140171991 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
