Sir James George Frazer's Biography(Books)(Photos)

Sir James George Frazer (January 1, 1854, glasgow, Scotland
– May 7, 1941, cambridge), was a Scottish social

discussions of different sites and his eyewitness accounts
of Greece at the end of the 19th century.

anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern
studies of mythology and comparative religion.

Selected works

His most famous work, The Golden Bough (1890), documents and

* Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogenies, and
Other Pieces (1935)

details similar magical and religious beliefs across the
globe. Frazer posited that human belief progressed through

* The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion (1933-36)
* Condorcet on the Progress of the Human Mind (1933)

three stages: primitive magic, replaced by religion, in turn
replaced by science.

* Garnered Sheaves (1931)
* The Growth of Plato's Ideal Theory (1930)

* Myths of the Origin of Fire (1930)
* Fasti, by Ovid (text, translation and commentary), 5

Born in Glasgow, Frazer attended school at Springfield

volumes (1929)
o one-volume abridgement (1931)

Academy and Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh. He studied at
the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge,

+ revised by G. P. Goold (1989, corr. 1996): isbn
0-674-99279-2

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 Trinity to study law at the Middle Temple

* The Gorgon's Head and other Literary Pieces (1927)
* The Worship of Nature (1926) (from 1923–25 gifford

and yet never practised. He was four times elected to
Trinity's Title Alpha Fellowship, and was associated with

Lectures,)
* The Library, by Apollodorus (text, translation and

notes), 2 volumes (1921): isbn 0-674-99135-4 (vol. 1); isbn
0-674-99136-2 (vol. 2)

knighted in 1914. He was, if not blind, then severely
visually impaired from 1930 on. He and his wife, Lily, died

* Folk-lore in the Old Testament (1918)
* The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead,

within a few hours of each other. They are buried at the
Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge, England.

3 volumes (1913-24)
* The Golden Bough, 3rd edition: 12 volumes (1906-15;

The study of myth and religion became his areas of

1936)
o 1922 one-volume abridgement: isbn 0-486-42492-8

expertise. Except for in Italy and Greece, Frazer was not
widely traveled. His prime sources of data were ancient

* Totemism and Exogamy (1910)
* Psyche's Task (1909)

histories and questionnaires mailed to missionaries and
Imperial officials all over the globe. Frazer's interest in

* The Golden Bough, 2nd edition: expanded to 6 volumes
(1900)

social anthropology was aroused by reading E. B. Tylor's
Primitive Culture (1871) and encouraged by his friend, the

* Descriptions of Greece, by Pausanias (translation and
commentary) (1897)

biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, who was linking
the Old Testament with early Hebrew folklore.

* The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, 1st
edition (1890)

Frazer was far from being the first to study religions

* Totemism (1887)

dispassionately, as a cultural phenomenon rather than from
within theology. He was, though, the first to detail the

relations between myths and rituals. His theories of
totemism were superseded by Claude Levi-Strauss and his

* Joseph Campbell
* Archetypal literary criticism

vision of the annual sacrifice of the Year King has not been
borne out by field studies. His generation's choice of

* Edward Burnett Tylor
* Life-death-rebirth deity

Darwinian evolution as a social paradigm, interpreted by
Frazer as three rising stages of human progress -- magic

* Sacred king

giving rise to religion, then culminating in science -- has
not proved valid. Yet The Golden Bough, his study of ancient

References Text document with red question mark.svg
This article includes a list of references or external

cults, rites, and myths, including their parallels with
early Christianity, arguably his greatest work, is still

links, but its sources remain unclear because it has
insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this

rifled by modern mythographers for its detailed information.
The work's influence spilled well over the conventional

article by introducing more precise citations where
appropriate. (May 2008)

bounds of academia, however; the symbolic cycle of life,
death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of all

* Jan Harold Brunvard, American Folklore; An

pedigrees captivated a whole generation of artists and
poets. Perhaps the most notable product of this fascination

Encyclopedia, s.v. "Superstition" (p 692-697)

is T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922). more recently
it was an influence on the ending of Francis Ford Coppola's

1. ^ Mary Beard, "Frazer, Leach, and Virgil: The
Popularity (and Unpopularity) of the Golden Bough"

film Apocalypse Now (a copy of The Golden Bough figures in
one of the final shots).

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34.2 (April
1992:203-224).

The first edition, in two volumes, was published in 1890.

2. ^ Jaques Waardenburg. 1999. Classical Approaches to
the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of

The third edition was finished in 1915 and ran to twelve
volumes, with a supplemental thirteenth volume added in

Research. Volume I: Introduction and Anthology. p244. New
York : Walter de Gruyter. isbn 3110163284

1936. He also published a single volume abridgement, largely
compiled by his wife Lady Frazer, in 1922, with some

3. ^ Frazer, James George in Venn, j. & j. a., alumni
Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols,

controversial material removed from the text.

1922–1958.
4. ^ See social darwinism and human progress.

Jane Ellen Harrison, a respected historian of Greek religion
and a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, gave Frazer's

5. ^ For the history of The Golden Bough see R. Fraser,
The Making of The Golden Bough: The Origins and Growth of an

immensely popular work academic credibility, and it has
retained the reputation of a middle-brow classic.

Argument (London, 1990).
6. ^ Some non-academioc factors in this middle-brow

Frazer's pioneering work has come under criticism by more

popularity are the main concern of Mary Beard, op. cit.
below.

recent scholars, following a series of critical, even
vituperative articles by Edmund Leach, one of which was

7. ^ "For those who see Frazer's work as the start of
anthropological study in its modern sense, the site and the

the discipline of Social Anthropology", remarks Mary Beard,
in noting the critical reassment of Frazer's work following

which omits the supportive archaeological details. In a
positive review of a work narrowly focusing on the cultus in

Edmund Leach, "Frazer, Leach, and Virgil: The Popularity
(and Unpopularity) of the Golden Bough" Comparative Studies

the Hittite city of Nerik, J. D. Hawkins remarked
approvingly in 1973, "The whole work is very methodical and

Frazer." Frazer's six volume commentary on the Greek
traveler Pausanias' description of Greece in the mid 2nd c.

ein Beitrag zur hethitischen Religionsgeschichte, in
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,

AD remains one of his most important works although
archaeological excavations have added enormously to our

University of London 36.1 (1973:128).
10. ^ Gifford Lecture Series - Books at

knowledge of Grece since his time. There is still much of
value in his detailed historical and topographical

www.giffordlectures.org