James George Frazer

(Revision as of 10:51, 3 Mar 2005)

Sir James George Frazer (January 1, 1854 - May 7, 1941 EV), a social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion, was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied at Glasgow University 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 Trinity to study law at the Middle Temple and yet never practiced. He was four times elected to Trinity's Title Alpha Fellowship, and was associated with the college for most of his life, except for a year, 1907-08 EV, spent at the University of Liverpool. He was knighted in 1914 EV. He was, if not blind, then severely visually impaired from 1930 EV on.

The study of myth and religion became his areas of expertise. Except for Italy and Greece, Frazer was not widely travelled. His prime sources of data were ancient histories and questionnaires mailed to missionaries and Imperial officials all over the globe. Frazer's interest in social anthropology was aroused by reading E.B. Taylor's Primitive Culture (1871 EV) and encouraged by his friend, the biblical scholar W. Robertson-Smith, who was linking the Old Testament with early Hebrew folklore. Frazer was far from the first to study religions dispassionately, as a cultural phenomenon rather than from within theology, but he was the first to detail the relations between myths and rituals, though his theories of totemism were superseded by Claude Lévi-Strauss and his vision of the annual sacrifice of the Year King has not been borne out by field studies. Even his generation's choice of Darwinian evolution as a social paradigm, interpreted by Frazer as three rising stages of human progress—magic giving rise to religion, then culminating in science—has not proved valid. Yet The Golden Bough, his study of ancient cults, rites, and myths, including their parallels with early Christianity, arguably his greatest work, is still rifled by modern mythographers for its detailed information. Notably, The Golden Bough influenced René Girard and drove him to study anthropology to develop his mimesis theory of the scapegoat.

The first edition, in two volumes, was published in 1890 EV. The third edition was finished in 1915 EV and ran to twelve volumes, with a supplemental thirteenth volume added in 1936 EV. He also published a single volume abridgement, largely compiled by his wife Lady Frazer, in 1922 EV, with some controversial material removed from the text.

Selected Works

• Totemism (1887 EV)
• The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, 1st edition (1890 EV)
• Descriptions of Greece, by Pausanias (translation and commentary) (1897 EV)
• The Golden Bough, 2nd edition (1900 EV)
• Psyche's Task (1909 EV)
• Totemism and Exogamy (1910 EV)
• The Golden Bough, 3rd edition (1906-15; 1936 EV)
• The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, 3 volumes (1913-24 EV)
• Folk-lore in the Old Testament (1918 EV)
• Apollodorus: the Library (1921 EV)
• The Worship of Nature (1926 EV)
• The Gorgon's Head and other Literary Pieces (1927 EV)
• Man, God, and Immortality (1927 EV)
• Fasti, by Ovid (translation) (1929 EV)
• Myths of the Origin of Fire (1930 EV)
• The Growth of Plato's Ideal Theory (1930 EV)
• Garnered Sheaves (1931 EV)
• Condorcet on the Progress of the Human Mind (1933 EV)
• The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion (1933-36 EV)
• Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogenies, and Other Pieces (1935 EV)

External links

• Sir James Frazer (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jfrazer.htm): brief analysis
• The Golden Bough: (http://users.compaqnet.be/cn111132/Frazer/) on-line text, 1922 abridged edition

References

• Wikipedia (2005). James Frazer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frazer). Retrieved March 1, 2005