The Golden Bough
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few works have done more to reshape Western thought about myth, magic, and religion than this monumental study of humanity's oldest beliefs. Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough presents a sweeping comparative survey of ancient rituals, fertility cults, and the dying-and-rising god archetype — tracing the primitive logic beneath the world's great mythologies from the sacred groves of ancient Italy to the farthest reaches of tribal culture across the globe. Frazer argues with forensic brilliance that magic and religion are not aberrations of primitive minds but systematic attempts to understand and control the natural world, a thesis that would go on to profoundly influence figures as diverse as T.S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and Joseph Campbell. His prose is richly detailed and authoritative, weaving together ethnography, classical scholarship, and folklore into a single, grand narrative. Originally published in twelve volumes, this abridged edition distils the essential argument into a single, accessible text — making it the perfect entry point into one of the most consequential works of anthropological literature ever written.
Author: Sir James George Frazer
Format: Paperback
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few works have done more to reshape Western thought about myth, magic, and religion than this monumental study of humanity's oldest beliefs. Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough presents a sweeping comparative survey of ancient rituals, fertility cults, and the dying-and-rising god archetype — tracing the primitive logic beneath the world's great mythologies from the sacred groves of ancient Italy to the farthest reaches of tribal culture across the globe. Frazer argues with forensic brilliance that magic and religion are not aberrations of primitive minds but systematic attempts to understand and control the natural world, a thesis that would go on to profoundly influence figures as diverse as T.S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and Joseph Campbell. His prose is richly detailed and authoritative, weaving together ethnography, classical scholarship, and folklore into a single, grand narrative. Originally published in twelve volumes, this abridged edition distils the essential argument into a single, accessible text — making it the perfect entry point into one of the most consequential works of anthropological literature ever written.