At Cambridge, he became best friends with the Scottish Semiticist William Robertson Smith, who turned him from classicist to anthropologist. In 1931 he published a critical edition of Ovid’s Latin Fasti, which consists of supposed interviews with Roman gods. In 1921 he published a two-volume translation and commentary on Apollodorus’s The Library, one of the key sources on ancient Greek mythology. In 1898 he published a six-volume translation and commentary on Pausanias’ travels to ancient religious sites in the 2nd century CE. As a traditional classicist, Frazer undertook translations and commentaries on Greek and Roman works that dealt with myths and rituals. He was elected and then twice re-elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and stayed there as a Fellow his whole life-with the exception of an unhappy few months as Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Liverpool. His father was a staunch member of the Free Church of Scotland, but in the son religiosity never “took.” James George was an atheist and felt disdain toward religion.
He was educated at the University of Glasgow and attended Cambridge University for graduate studies in classics. Its discussion of magical types, the sacrificial killing of kings, the dying god, and the scapegoat is given fresh pertinence in this new edition.James George Frazer was the son of a prosperous Scottish pharmacist. A seminal work of modern anthropolgy, The Golden Bough also influenced many twentieth-century writers, including D H Lawrence, T S Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis. For the first time this one-volume edition restores Frazer’s bolder theories and sets them within the framework of a valuable introduction and notes. In it some of the more controversial passages were dropped, including Frazer’s daring speculations on the Crucifixion of Christ. That abridgement has never been reconsidered for a modern audience.
First published in 1890, The Golden Bough was eventually issued in a twelve-volume edition (1906–15) which was abridged in 1922 by the author and his wife. A classic study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, and the progress through magic and religion to scientific thought, The Golden Bough has a unique status in modern anthropology and literature.
0 kommentar(er)
