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An edition of selected letters by (and in some cases to) Sir J. G. Frazer (1854-1941), the eminent anthropologist and historian of religion, and author of The Golden Bough. It offers an invaluable insight into British intellectual life at the turn of the century, and also illuminates the composition, and reception, of The Golden Bough itself.
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Sir James G. Frazer (1854-1941) is famous as the author of The Golden Bough, but his work ranged widely across classics, cultural history, folklore and literary criticism as well as anthropology. A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 62 years, Sir James G. Frazer devoted his life to research. This volume was first published in 1930.
Sir James G. Frazer (1854-1941) is famous as the author of The Golden Bough, but his work ranged widely across classics, cultural history, folklore and literary criticism as well as anthropology. A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 62 years, Sir James G. Frazer devoted his life to research. This volume was first published in 1931.
Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. Defining Magic is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working. The reader brings together seminal writings from antiquity to today. The texts have been selected on the strength of their success in defining magic as a category, their impact on future scholarship, and their originality. The writings are divided into chronological sections and each essay is separately introduced for student readers. Together, the...
Sir James G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, first published in 1890, was the first work in English to understand the religion of classical antiquity in the context of primitive religion. Its dramatic impact on the history of ideas lasted well into the twentieth century, in its association of religious myths with the more primitive forms of ritual and magic generated by the 'savage mind', identified as a common misunderstanding of the scientific laws governing the natural world. This highly acclaimed biography is a comprehensive study of Frazer's life, the influences on his work, and its wide-ranging implications for modern anthropology, classics, cultural history and folklore.
According to Frazer, superstition may have been responsible for some terrible misunderstandings and even worse misdeeds, but in lending strength to the core institutions of government, private property, marriage, and respect for human life, superstition has played an invaluable role in the increased civility of man. "Surely it is better," he asserts, "that men should do right from wrong motives than that they should do wrong with the best intentions." A treat for students of history and social anthropology, Psyche's Task is a lively, informative defense from the author of the influential The Golden Bough. Scottish anthropologist SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER (1854-1941) also wrote Man, God, and Immortality (1927) and Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies (1935).