The Golden Bough

views updated

The Golden Bough

James Frazer 1890

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Key Figures
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
Further Reading

Introduction

Ever since its first edition in 1890, The Golden Bough has been considered a major influence in the development of western thought. In this book, Sir James G. Frazer, a Cambridge researcher trained in classical literature, outlines ancient myths and folk legends, proposing that all civilizations go through three stages of development: belief in magic leads to organized religion, which eventually leads to faith in the powers of science. Frazer's literary style raised interest in the ideas of other world cultures at a time when western societies considered the peoples of Africa and Asia to be the products of "primitive" thought. In addition, his attempts to identify the basic story motifs to which all human beings respond was carried forth in the twentieth century by psychologists such as Carl Jung, who developed the idea of the collective unconscious, and by such literary masters as James Joyce and T. S. Eliot.

Frazer went on to expand the original book, first to a two-volume set and then to a total of thirteen volumes, before editing it down to one concise volume, which is the one that is most commonly read today. Over time, the book's reputation has changed. While it was once considered to be an important study in comparative anthropology, many social scientists later found fault with the methods that Frazer used in collecting materials: he never spoke directly to people of the cultures about which he wrote, but instead he relied on other researchers' findings and on questionnaires that he gave to people who traveled to other lands. Frazer's conclusions are generally considered unreliable because he did not follow sound scientific procedures, but The Golden Bough is still revered as a well-written introduction to the subject of comparative religion.

Author Biography

James George Frazer was born on January 1, 1854, in Glasgow, Scotland. As he grew up he developed an interest in classical literature, which was his major when he enrolled in Glasgow University at age fifteen. After graduating Glasgow he received a scholarship to Trinity College at Cambridge, where he was given a teaching position in 1879. For the rest of his life, except for one unsatisfying year at Liverpool University in 1907, Frazer was associated with Trinity College.

In his early years at Trinity, Frazer formed a relationship with William Robertson Smith, who at that time was assembling the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Smith asked Frazer, who had recently become interested in the cultures and stories of primitive people, to write an article about totemism for the encyclopedia. Frazer was a dedicated writer, spending twelve and fourteen hours a day researching in the library; when his finished entry proved too long to include in the encyclopedia, he published it as his first book, Totemism, in 1887.

Soon after that, Frazer started on what was to be the defining work of his lifetime, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. A two-volume edition was published in 1890; it was expanded to a three-volume edition that was published in 1900. Between 1911 and 1915 a thirteen-volume edition came out. In 1922, Frazer edited the twelve books down to one abridged edition. A revised abridged edition was released thirty-seven years later, in 1959, long after his death.

Most of Frazer's other writings revolved around anthropological themes that were introduced in The Golden Bough. These include The Scope of Social Anthropology (1908); The Worship of Nature (1926); and Myths of the Origin of Fire (1930). In 1914 he was knighted in recognition of his work.

Frazer died in 1941 in Cambridge, where he taught. He is credited by many with being one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Plot Summary

Chapters 1-2

The entire line of inquiry of The Golden Bough is developed from one particular ritualistic practice that Frazer describes in the book's early pages. In Italy, he explains, there is a wooded area on the shore of Lake Nemi, which is dedicated to the memory of the Roman goddess Diana. By tradition, each priest of Diana who guards the forest, known as the King of the Wood, gained his position by murdering the priest who held the position before him. Tradition held that the King of the Wood must be killed by an escaped slave who would beat the king to death with a golden bough taken from a tree that grew in the grove. Frazer was curious about several elements in this tradition. He wondered why the priest is referred to as a king, a practice he learned was fairly common. Next, he wondered about the probability that the priest would spend much time worrying about would-be assassins ready to take his position from him. Finally, Frazer wondered why the golden bough was so important to the ritual and why there was an assumption that the branch of gold would always be available. Frazer's search for more information generates a long inquiry into myths and beliefs of various cultures.

Chapters 3-15

For an extended section near the beginning of his inquiry, Frazer looks at concepts associated with magic and how magic evolved into religion. He shows how kings were thought to have magical powers and how that idea translated throughout the ancient world into the idea of the king as a religious figure, sometimes equated with a god. At the same time, he also explores how trees, particularly oaks, came to hold special significance in agrarian societies.

Chapters 16-28

After establishing the connection between secular rulers and religion, Frazer looks at the ways in which this relationship endangered those important personages. He discusses taboos at length, drawing from a variety of cultures to establish that taboos occur both as primitive superstitions and as beliefs in modern, cultivated societies. Once he has described forbidden acts and how they fit into the established social order, Frazer brings in examples where the forbidden actions actually become part of the social code, focusing on the taboos that limited the actions of the king and/or priest. The discussion then leads to cultures that practice the killing of kings (so that their divine powers will not be left to wither with age) and the killing of sacred trees.

Chapters 29-49

Tying in myths that are related to the story of Diana, such as those involving Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Demeter and Persephone, Frazer shows how various deities in world religions have been connected to the agricultural cycle of life and death. Each of these myths involves an important figure who is identified with the growth cycle, a figure who dies or is stolen away to the underworld but then is allowed to return to the earth for limited stretches of time, illustrating the idea that the deaths of gods are not catastrophic, but instead are considered to be part of the process of nature.

Chapters 50-61

Frazer explores a variety of methods of sacrifice throughout time and in different lands, including ritual killing of sacred animals in order to honor gods and killing animals as a way of symbolically killing evil. This discussion presents the concept of the scapegoat, which was originally an actual goat meant to represent evil but later came to be a human being who represented evil and was killed for the same purpose. Frazer draws connections between the idea of murdering kings in order to retain their divine power while it is still at its peak and the idea of killing people who can then take evil to the grave with them, and he speculates that the two practices became joined as one.

Chapters 62-67

In theorizing about why the golden bough is so important to the tradition of succession of the King of the Wood, Frazer connects gold, the sun, fire, and power. Trees that had been hit by lightning were, for example, often seen as especially significant because they were thought to have even more fire in them than ordinary trees that were burned for fuel. Frazer speculates that the golden bough may be an ancient name for mistletoe, which grows as a vine on oak trees, turns yellow or golden while the rest of the tree remains green, and is thought in several cultures to have mystical properties. Connecting the magical power of the kings with the magical powers ascribed to mistletoe, Frazer identifies the belief that the soul of a person could be put into some object for safekeeping and the belief that important persons could only be killed by something that was already a part of them: thus, if the power of the King of the Wood was already in the mistletoe, it would make sense that the bough would be the only thing needed to kill him.

Chapters 68-69

In the last two chapters, Frazer returns to the question of why the priest of Diana must be killed and why by the particular prescribed method. One conclusion to be reached from this inquiry, he says, is that the process of civilization leads from a primitive belief in magic to a more orderly belief in religion to, ultimately, a belief in science. Though confident that this is the natural progression for any society, he reminds readers that science is not necessarily the end of human growth and that there may be other systems of belief that will supplant it in the future.

Key Figures

Adonis

In addition to his story being a fixture of the Greek tradition, the legend of the Greek god Adonis, also known as Tammuz, has roots stretching back to Babylonia and Syria. As both Tammuz in Babylonia and Adonis in Greece, he was a god of vegetation and was seen as the embodiment of masculine beauty. He was loved by Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, who hid him in a gold chest, which she gave to Persephone, the queen of the underworld, for safekeeping. When Persephone peeked in the chest and saw Adonis, she was captivated with his beauty and refused to give him back to Aphrodite. Zeus settled the dispute by giving him to each goddess for part of the year. The change of seasons was explained in connection to the place where Adonis was during each part of the year, since Aphrodite, lamenting when he was gone, refused to help plants or animals grow, marking winter in climates where it did not snow.

Aeneas

Aeneas is a central figure of Roman mythology. He is the title character of Virgil's masterpiece The Aeneid, which recounts his seven years of travels after the Greeks' siege of Troy. His journey ended when he landed in Italy and founded Rome. According to legend, Aeneas, before going to the underworld, was told that he must take with him a golden bough from an evergreen oak tree that grew in the grove of Diana, to give as a gift to the Queen of the Underworld.

Artemis

See Diana

Attis

Like Adonis, Attis was a god of vegetation, worshipped in Phrygia. He was a shepherd, famed for his good looks and beloved by Cybele, the goddess of fertility. His death is explained in different ways in different versions of his story, and he is said to have been turned into a pine tree, linking him to the tree mythology that drives the story of The Golden Bough. In a similar way to the story of Demeter and Persephone, Attis' death caused Cybele to grieve so much that the earth was thrown into a famine, and it is for this reason that annual rituals were performed in the fall to mourn the loss of Attis and in the spring to celebrate his return from the underworld.

Balder

In Scandinavian mythology, Balder the Beautiful could be harmed by nothing on heaven or earth except a bough of mistletoe. Frazer supposes that Balder was a personification of the mistletoe that grows on the oak tree, which was worshipped as sacred by the Scandinavians. This mistletoe is considered to be a possible source for the idea of the golden tree bough referred to in the book's title, thereby connecting the ancient Roman ritual practiced in Italy with the religious practices that developed in the countries of northern Europe.

Demeter

Demeter is the Greek goddess of the harvest. The story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, one of the oldest Greek myths, has parallels in many ancient cultures. According to the myth, when Persephone was carried off by the lord of the underworld, Demeter refused to help the harvest, causing famine across the Earth. Zeus, the king of the gods, returned Persephone to her but ruled that she could only spend two-thirds of the year with Demeter and had to return to Hades for four months of the year. For the four months annually that she is gone, Demeter is said to mourn, accounting for the lack of vegetation in the wintertime. Frazer's analysis of the story centers on the poem Hymn to Demeter, by Homer. Elements of her story are found throughout the world, traced through the "corn-mother" goddess worshipped by Cretans during the Stone Age and similar stories about characters identified as corn spirits.

Diana

One of the most important figures in classical mythology, Diana is the Roman goddess of the hunt and of childbirth, associated with the Greek goddess Artemis. Her association with childbirth and fertility, as well as with hunting, led to the belief that she was also the goddess of wood, and in particular of oak, which is specified in the rituals that Frazer examines in The Golden Bough. The temple of Diana of the Wood, near the village of Nemi in Italy, is guarded by a priest who has earned his position by killing the previous priest, a ritual on which Frazer builds the book.

Dionysus

Dionysus is the god associated with the grape and, by extension, with wine and drunkenness. A religion was formed around the worship of him, celebrating the irrational over the rational, countering the focus on reason that characterized Greek culture. He is related to the book's focal story about the golden bough because, in addition to being god of grapes, he is considered god of all trees. Moreover, the practice of sacrificing goats in ceremonies to honor Dionysus resembles the ritual sacrifice of the King of the Forest in the golden bough tradition.

Egeria

Egeria is a water-nymph who is important in the sacred grove at Nemi because, like Diana, she can give ease to women in childbirth. Sometimes Egeria is considered to be another form of Diana.

Hippolytus

See Virbius

Isis

Sister and wife of Osiris in Egyptian mythology, Isis was given dozens of different personalities throughout the years. Frazer speculates that one of her original functions in mythology was that she was thought to be the goddess of corn and barley, having discovered them and given them to mankind. Over time, her image changed from that of the plain corn-mother (a function shared by the Roman goddess Diana) to a glamorous beauty, and as this transformation occurred she grew to be the most popular of all Egyptian deities.

King of the Wood

The King of the Wood is the traditional priest of the Arician grove. Frazer recounts how this position has been handed down, generation after generation, since antiquity. The book's title, The Golden Bough, refers to the tradition that states that the King of the Woods must be killed by an escaped slave, hit with a golden bough from a tree that grows there. The person who kills him then becomes the new King of the Wood. He is thought to represent a worldly husband to the goddess Diana. Throughout the course of the book, Frazer speculates about various theories explaining how the king's ritual murder came to be custom. The history of the position, as well as similar rituals in other cultures, is explored. Using this particularly significant ritual, Frazer examines the implications of hundreds of beliefs and their evolution over the centuries.

Numa

Numa was a wise king who was a husband or lover of Egeria. Since the legend of Egeria is closely associated with that of Diana, Frazer speculates that Numa has a place in the cult at Nemi that serves as a basis of the book. Numa is often thought to be another form of the King of the Wood.

Osiris

Osiris is an ancient Egyptian god whose death and resurrection were celebrated each year. Osiris was the most popular of Egyptian deities, and he was worshipped for centuries. As an Egyptian king, he is credited with having taught the Egyptians how to cultivate fruit from trees, while Isis, who was both his sister and his wife, taught the people how to plant and harvest grains. Osiris traveled the world, teaching people of foreign lands how to grow crops. When he returned to Egypt, though, he was ambushed by a cadre of forty-seven conspirators, led by one of his own brothers; they tricked him into a box and, sealing the lid, sent it floating off down the Nile. Isis found his body downstream and buried it, but Osiris lived on as the lord of the underworld.

Orestes

A very famous figure in Greek mythology, Orestes is thought, according to one legend, to have started the cult of Diana of the Woods. After killing the King of the Tauric Chersonese, Orestes is said to have fled to Nemi, the place where the golden bough ritual is followed, thereby introducing Diana to that part of Italy.

Persephone

Greek myth explains how Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, was playing in a field one day and was carried off by the Lord of the Underworld, Pluto. When Demeter's grief threatened to destroy the world with famine, Zeus arranged for Persephone to return to the surface world for two-thirds of the year, but for the last third she always had to be Pluto's bride again in Hades. She also figures into the story of Adonis, with whom she fell in love and whom she tried to keep in the underworld with her, although Zeus allowed him to return to the earth's surface for several months each year to be with Aphrodite, who loved him first.

Tammuz

See Adonis

Virbius

Bearing the Roman name for the Greek hero Hippolytus, Virbius was Diana's lover and showed no interest in other women. When the goddess Aphrodite tried to take Virbius for herself he spurned her advances, and in her humiliation she persuaded his father to kill him, but Diana brought him back to life and hid him at Nemi. Among the rituals that make up the focus of The Golden Bough, Frazer includes the ban on horses at Nemi, which is thought to have started in recognition of the fact that Virbius was said to have been killed by being dragged behind horses. He is considered to be the founder of the sacred grove and the first king of Nemi.

Themes

Search for Knowledge

The central subject of this book, and the source of its title, is the ritual replacement of the priest of Diana at Aricia through murder. Frazer was so curious about this myth that he examined it with meticulous attention to detail. Hundreds of pages filled with thousands of examples from cultures throughout history are devoted to exploring myth. The Golden Bough contains sections that seem unrelated to Diana and the King of the Wood. Readers who do not follow the book from its beginning might wonder, for example, how it could possibly lead from Roman mythology to eighteenth-century Irish Christmas rituals or the custom of people of New Hebrides who throw their food leftovers into the sea.

Despite its strange and twisting side trips, though, this book returns to its main point often enough to assure readers that it is, in fact, about that one specific myth. In addressing the question with such a tidal wave of information about a variety of cultures, Frazer illustrates something about knowledge and how it is acquired. The message that is embedded in his method is that knowledge is not simple or isolated but is instead only relevant when it is connected to related facts, which are themselves related to other facts.

Search for Self

In the course of discussing one academic question that leads him to a myriad of exotic, ancient cultural traditions, Frazer ends up showing how remote practices relate to modern times. With books about psychology or contemporary life, it is easy for readers to connect to their own lives, but The Golden Bough is burdened with the added responsibility of subject material that its author considers important precisely because it does not seem to directly affect his life or the lives of his readers. From the very beginning of the book, he does nothing to tell readers why they should care, leaving it to their own intelligence to deduce what the practices of dead civilizations have to do with the state of humanity today. Still, the personal relevance of everything in the book is hard to miss. The cold approach that Frazer takes toward the many cultures that he mentions in this book might be seen as a way for readers to distance themselves from his subjects, but then again, it is more likely to make readers see their own lives from the outside, through the objective eyes of the scientist.

The taboos of other cultures are different, but similar in structure, to modern cultural standards. The values of hunters and farmers, so strongly based in the cycles of the moon and the seasons, regulate modern life, from the holidays of the Judeo-Christian tradition (which coincide with pagan calendars) to the nine-month schedule of the U.S. school year. The tradition of sacrificing powerful priests and kings tells readers much about the otherwise contradictory ways celebrities are treated. In all of the traditions that Frazer has included in The Golden Bough, there is a common thread. He emphasizes this commonality by drawing his examples from as wide a pool as possible, in order to show that his ideas are not limited to just a few societies that happen to be similar. Frazer presents enough examples to make a convincing argument that what he says applies to the basic human situation.

Topics for Further Study

Look for a behavior that is apparent in everyday life but that people seem to do for no other reason than tradition. Try to discover what that behavior might have developed from. Another way to go about this topic is to think about the mythical history of some object that did not exist when Frazer wrote, such as computers or cars.
Make a chart or "family tree" of the mythical figures who are mentioned in The Golden Bough, showing their relationship to one another.
George Lucas has said that he based much of his Star Wars film saga on mythological motifs. Research which mythic stories Lucas had in mind, and find where they fit into the argument Frazer presents in The Golden Bough.
Choose one of the myths mentioned in the book and make your own picture of it, the way that Turner depicted the scene at the lake of Nemi.

Style

Archetype

An archetype is a model or type in literature that is considered to be universal, occurring in all cultures at all places and times. The story of the King of the Wood that Frazer focuses on in The Golden Bough has details that are specific to its context that do not appear in other circumstances, and so it cannot be considered archetypal. However, in trying to trace the source of this unique myth, Frazer finds that it derives from many other archetypes that gather together. Some examples of these are the stories of gods who bring on winter by descending to hell for several months a year; corn mother myths; ritual murder of scapegoats; and the reverence for the oak tree in societies where it grows. These archetypes are familiar, in some form, to all cultures. Some twentieth-century psychologists have speculated that archetypes are embedded in the genetic code of humans.

Folklore

The word "folklore" refers to the beliefs and traditions of groups of people. Usually, these cultural aspects are not formally recorded by the culture itself, which might be unaware of them; they are more likely to be recorded by an outside anthropologist. At the time that Frazer started to work on The Golden Bough, interest in the beliefs of the common people of a given culture was just starting to gain recognition: the word "folklore" was coined in 1846, just a few decades before Frazer's first edition.

Objectivity

One of the most notable aspects of Frazer's style is the dry, scientific tone of his writing. He never conveys an opinion or any feeling about the stories he relates. Given the volume of information that he presents, this objectivity can make it difficult for readers to absorb what he has to say: because the work shows no variance nor any emotional involvement of any kind, readers are left to determine the importance of each piece of information for themselves. Even though this characteristic makes the book less interesting to read, Frazer's objective tone is necessary. This book's main purpose is to be educational, not entertaining, and the objective tone assures that he is taking a properly neutral stance toward what he is reporting.

Historical Context

Frazer published the first edition of The Golden Bough in 1890, just eight years after the death of Charles Darwin. Darwin, a British naturalist, considered to be one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, developed a theory of evolution, which he outlined in his 1859 book On the Origins of Species. This work popularized the phrase "survival of the fittest." According to Darwinian evolution, the species that were best fitted to their environments were the ones that were bound to survive, while the ones that were not well adapted tended to die off and become extinct. Within a species, genetic adaptations were achieved when those organisms that had the traits that were most important for their survival, such as speed or strength, were the ones that lived long enough to reproduce with other survivors, and the offspring of such unions inherited advantageous traits, making each generation more likely to mature and reproduce than the previous one.

Darwin also argued that all organisms were descended from one single source and that they changed as they adapted to different situations. This idea, developed further in 1871 in The Descent of Man, met with much stronger opposition than the idea of natural selection and is contested to this day by some religious fundamentalists. Still, even his detractors would be forced to admit that Darwin was one of the most influential scientists of his day.

In The Golden Bough, readers can get a feel for the enthusiasm that Darwin's theories inspired in scientists of the late nineteenth century. Frazer's explanation of how cultures inevitably develop from primitive belief in magic to more complex belief in religion and then, finally, to a reliance on science shows an unwavering faith in the idea that, over time, entire systems of belief evolve from one form to another. It is a supposition, like Darwin's evolutionary scale, that would have seemed impossible to an earlier generation. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, sciences had shifted their focus from examining isolated events to studying events in respect to their relationship to similar events. Like Darwin, who had studied the different adaptations in similar species that had evolved in different climates, Frazer speculated about the ways that different story motifs appeared in altered but recognizable form in different cultures.

Frazer's belief in society's inevitable growth toward faith in science—which, today, is the theory of his that is most often rejected—can be seen mirrored in the works of the most well-known economic writer of his time, Karl Marx. In his 1848 tract The Communist Manifesto, Marx proposed that all world governments would pass through specific, predetermined periods of growth before ending up with Communist political structures. Like Frazer, Marx believed that there was just one logical outcome to the growth of society, and he believed that he could determine it scientifically.

While his theories about cultural progression were challenged from the very first publication of The Golden Bough, Frazer is still acknowledged as a highly influential anthropologist. His work generated a new interest in comparative anthropology, influencing a generation of late nineteenth-century psychologists, including Sigmund Freud (whose theories often alluded to stories from ancient myths) and Carl Jung (whose theory of the collective unconscious seems to explain Frazer's ideas of universal myths). The Golden Bough also influenced literature, particularly the work of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. Within its own field of anthropology, however, Frazer's work has not been very influential, owing to the fact that he did not gather his information directly from the people about whom he wrote. All of his work is based on secondhand information rather than field work, and as a result the value of his writing is considered marginal.

Critical Overview

When it was first published, The Golden Bough was considered an insightful work that tied together the widely divergent canon of anthropology into one cohesive theory. The book was praised for its thoroughness and accepted as a major scientific accomplishment. A 1890 review in the Journal of American Folklore, for instance, proclaimed the anonymous reviewer "grateful" to Frazer "for the exhibition of materials so rich, and for the literary skill with which he has made accessible observations so important to the central ideas of our modern thought." As time passed, however, questions arose about Frazer's methodology, which consisted of combining works that were gathered through non-scientific methods. His use of hearsay and third-person accounts of cultural practices made anthropologists doubt the value of his work as science.

Compare & Contrast

1890: People in Europe and the United States know little about non-Western culture; they refer to Africa as "The Dark Continent" and Asia as "The Mysterious Orient."
Today: Inexpensive travel and the Internet have made it possible for people all over the world to be aware of distant cultures.
1890: Greek mythology is studied in almost all schools and is generally well-known.
Today: More students know about the Greek gods from Disney movies than from studying them in class.
1890: A scholar like Frazer can make an international reputation for his theories by making assumptions about the results of other anthropologists' work.
Today: Leading scientists have research assistants who can assemble data under their supervision.

Still the book's reputation as a work of literature grew. It was recognized as having influenced such important twentieth-century thinkers as Freud, Anatole France, Arnold Toynbee, Margaret Mead, and Oswald Spengler. In 1941, noted anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski noted an inconsistency in Frazer's impact on the intellectual community when he stated that "Frazer was and is one of the world's greatest teachers and masters" but that, despite his enormous following, "[h]is inability to convince seems to contradict his power to convert and to inspire." His point was that other writers followed Frazer for his vision and for the far-reaching thoroughness of his theories, even though they did not believe in the actual theories. By the second half of the century, critics found little sense in dwelling on shortcomings in The Golden Bough and instead accepted its impact. Stanley Edgar Hyman, for instance, wrote in 1962 that the book is "not primarily anthropology, if it ever was, but a great imaginative vision of the human condition." He saw no problem with reading this book, which was meant to be a scientific work, as a work of literature, noting that the author was trained in literature and not in anthropology: "It is in his original field of classical studies … that Frazer may have produced his greatest effect." Since then, many critics have joined Hyman in accepting The Golden Bough as an important piece of literature, but not as an important scientific achievement.

Criticism

David Kelly

Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and literature at College of Lake County. In this essay, Kelly considers whether the reputation that Frazer's book has maintained since its first printing will carry on into the future.

There is every reason in the world to believe that Sir James Frazer's name will be remembered for many years, due to the resounding importance of his masterpiece, The Golden Bough. The book had a powerful impact when it was first published in 1890, reaching beyond the usual academic audience that reads such scholarly works and finding a place in the public consciousness. Between then and his death in 1941, Frazer kept the work in the public eye with subsequent additions and expansions. Since then, the book has never gone out of print.

On the other hand, it would be easy to believe that The Golden Bough has outlived its usefulness. Frazer's rich, airy, academic writing style, which once may have served to impress and attract non-academic readers, is now considered to be hard work for the average person. The book's vast, encyclopedic catalogue of cultural practices, gleaned from years and years of meticulous research, may have once been thought of as the best single source of facts on its subject, but now the Internet has made even more cultural information available in one location, much of it from primary sources. Modern readers, attracted to the ease of finding information and put off by Frazer's difficult, antiquated language, might bypass the experience of reading The Golden Bough, drawn instead to more accessible sources for the same ideas, so that in time the unthinkable might happen, and James Frazer, once considered among the most influential writers of the twentieth century, could drop from memory.

From the start, The Golden Bough was accepted as both a scientific and literary achievement. It was central in getting Frazer, who was trained in classical literature, appointed a professorship for a year (in 1907) in social anthropology at Liverpool University. Such a casual crossing between the realms of science and art would be impossible today, when college education is more accessible. Today one could hardly be considered an expert in any field without at least having a degree in that area. At a time when demonstration of knowledge was more important than credentials, though, Frazer easily proved himself to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world regarding social anthropology. Any reader of The Golden Bough can tell that Frazer weaves its fabric from such diverse strains of cultural practices because he is so entirely familiar and comfortable with such a wide variety of them. He has a point to make and thousands of examples to draw from in the course of making it.

"Literary interpretation is not as concerned with whether the sources Frazer used are true as it is with how he explains the relationship between them. In that regard, no one can challenge his intellectual achievement."

It was his ability to weave a coherent tale that expanded Frazer's appeal beyond academics, making the book a success in the general population. There had been studies of folklore before, books and journals about obscure beliefs and practices. Studies of the myths of Greek and Roman mythologies had absorbed many academic careers. The greatest achievement of The Golden Bough was that it not only explained ideas from diverse areas of the globe but that it gave them meaning in relation to one another. The facts of, for example, a Scandinavian tradition, a Pakistani custom, and a pagan European ritual might be interesting to someone who has a background in such matters, who can put each piece of information into a context with others that one knows from experience. To an outsider, though, they are just unrelated facts. What Frazer did was, in effect, to make his readers feel like they are insiders. His narrative, starting with one fixed but somewhat arbitrary point, provides a context that all can absorb, which gave all his readers the chance to participate as if they are part of the panel of archeological experts.

One of the most important things that The Golden Bough illustrates is an attitude to take when comparing cultures. In its broad scope, the book recognized the diversity of cultural ideas. Reading it line by line, though, readers gain a sense of the sameness of all of cultural beliefs. Frazer provides a smooth ride through ages and across the globe, softened by his measured, objective tone. The book's authorial voice speaks with such firm confidence that it is difficult to disagree. Even in the 1800s, most of his readers would not have seen Joseph Mallord Turner's 1834 painting, which hung in London's National Gallery, but Frazer managed to draw them in, not alienate them, just as he has drawn in generations with his opening question, "Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough?" The discourse that follows the question could be considered a triumph of rhetoric, as he manages to hold the whole story of humanity together with sheer verbal dexterity. Now and then he brings the discussion back into focus with phrases such as "With these explanations and cautions I will now adduce some examples of gods" to remind readers of how one diversion or another fits into the larger picture. The persuasive power of using such a cultivated voice to address matters considered "primitive," such as magic and pagan religions, should not be underestimated either, as readers for more than a century have felt secure that The Golden Bough's narrative would lead to the satisfactory conclusion that there is indeed order in the development of belief systems.

What Do I Read Next?

Joseph Campbell was arguably the most popular writer on myth in the late twentieth century. His most famous work is The Power of Myth, an overview of how mythology is relevant to contemporary life. The book was based on a six-part series that Campbell did for Public Television with Bill Moyers. It was published in 1991 by Anchor.
Readers who are interested in Frazer's historical place as a student of myths can find out the state of the discipline before him in The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860. In this 1972 volume, authors Burton Feldman and Robert D. Richards give biographies of and samples from the great writers about myth, from Bernard Fontenelle (1657-1757) to Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).
In Myth: Its Meaning and Function, G. S. Kirk deals with weaknesses he found in works by Frazer and his followers: those of examining myths in relation to folktales and to rituals. This book was published by Cambridge University in 1970.
Schrödinger's Cat and "The Golden Bough" (2000), by physicist Randy Bancroft, attempts to tie together science, magic, and mythology for the modern reader. It was published by University Press of America.

And, in fact, the book went on to become one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. T. S. Eliot acknowledged the influence of The Golden Bough on his 1922 poem The Waste Land, which is generally considered to be one of the most significant texts of the modernist movement. D. H. Lawrence is said to have studied the book's accounts of Aztec sacrifices when he was working on Women in Love. Joseph Conrad's Kurtz, who rules a remote jungle tribe in Heart of Darkness with a magical sort of charisma, shows the influence, if not directly of Frazer, then of someone who is familiar with his work. The poet Robert Graves was a follower. And, of course, all of the writers whom these writers influenced can be said to owe something to Frazer, whether they have read his work or not.

But with each generation, fewer and fewer read the book. The decline started within Frazer's lifetime, as questions were raised about his methods. When the book first came out during the Victorian era, it was an impressive enough feat for a writer to gather a broad sampling of information and string it together. The early twentieth century was an age of specialization, though. Industries, most notably automobile manufacturers, developed the system of division of labor that had each worker on the assembly line concentrate on one small aspect of the overall production. In the spirit of this division of labor, the scientific method of collecting information was brought under tighter scrutiny. Just as support for Sigmund Freud's far-reaching conclusions was dampened by his personal relationships with his patients, so Frazer's work came to be viewed with skepticism because of his way of gathering information. His research was done in the library, not the field: many of the customs he reported were not observed firsthand but were instead retellings of stories reported from travelers. The possibilities of error in this method are obvious and have been often reported. Because his findings were not based on observations from anthropologists trained to understand what they were seeing, scientific interest in his writing declined.

Still, it is as a work of literature that The Golden Bough has come to readers today. As such, it has been free of the strict rules of scientific data gathering. Literary interpretation is not as concerned with whether the sources Frazer used are true as it is with how he explains the relationship between them. In that regard, no one can challenge his intellectual achievement. The trouble is that, as a piece of literature, the book can be exceedingly boring.

There is no rule that says that good literature should not be boring, and the idea of boredom is entirely relative: usually, the things that fascinate people in adulthood are the things that most bored them when they were children. Still, there is also a good chance that a work written for an earlier age can lose interest for all but the most narrowly specialized. What The Golden Bough accomplished, in terms of information, worldview, and style, was what the world needed then. But with the information either discredited or available elsewhere more easily and his unified worldview so prevalent that it is taken for granted, all the modern reader is left with is an antiquated Victorian prose style. The book will always have its fans because every field has its fans of esoterica, but in all likelihood future readers of The Golden Bough will pride themselves for having absorbed Frazer's story in the same way that collectors of such things take pride in the ownership of a rare old book.

Source:

David Kelly, Critical Essay on The Golden Bough, in Nonfiction Classics for Students, Gale, 2003.

Bernard McKenna

In the following essay, McKenna shows how Frazer's assumed cultural superiority over and distance from his subjects in The Golden Bough distinguish the work from a literary standpoint.

Literary critics have traced the influence of Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough through the works of authors as diverse as Scott Fitzgerald and Sigmund Freud. Almost no modern writer has escaped the scrutiny of comparison. However, only a few scholars have subjected The Golden Bough to the scrutiny of critical evaluation, and their studies are mostly responses to the "hostile scrutiny" of anthropologists and classical scholars who find fault with The Golden Bough's theoretical framework and methodology. Their objections are twofold: On one level they find fault with Frazer's lack of field experience—he gathers his information only from secondary sources; on another level they object to Frazer's interpretation of this information—he can find no value for the myths and customs within their society. Yet, despite its failings as an anthropological text, The Golden Bough has considerable value precisely because of its sense of assumed superiority and consequent isolation, and no critic has adequately examined its structure based on these principles.

After reviewing the intricacies of Frazer's argument it becomes clear that he is schooled in the vocabulary of dominance and cannot escape its instruction. This does not simply mean his education at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge. It means that he approached his analysis from a position of superiority and refused to yield equality or even legitimacy to the objects of his study. The method of his examination can be discerned as a three-part process. First, there is an attempted contact. Unfortunately, the contact is often attempted through a medium that belies intimacy—the second part of the process. The medium could simply be the mistaken notion that human relations can be achieved solely through intellectual means, but it is more likely that some quality of his analysis made contact impossible. The result is limited communication—the method's final stage. This process manifests itself on many

levels of The Golden Bough beginning with Frazer's chosen sources, continuing through his method of examining those sources, and proceeding through the results of his analysis—the discovery of lost traditions harboring secret associations, the origins of the Nemi ritual, a cycle of death and regeneration modelled on the seasons, and a hierarchy of religious and societal progress.

On its most basic level, Frazer's analysis requires an association with the wider world; in order to report various traditions he must become intimate with a diversity of cultures. He seeks to prove that certain "motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generally alike." His study examines the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians; and various "barbarian" tribes—the Celts, Gauls, and Germanic people. In addition he bends his gaze towards corners of a world contemporary with his analysis—modern Europe, Africa, Asia, the Levant, the Americas, and Australia. The scope of his analysis succeeds in incorporating a diversity of cultures representing a global society throughout time.

Yet Frazer chooses incorporation through the distorted glass of imperialist perspective. His sources read like a canon of empire and dominance ranging from Julius Caesar to the Spanish Conquerors to the travellers and military expeditions contemporary with his study. His is the view of "Lieutenant Gamble" and "Colonel Dodge," "Captain Moseby" and "Captain Bourke." The survey begins and ends with the "Afghan Boundary Mission"; a "Jesuit" or other "Christian missionary"; and "the United States Polar Expedition"—all of whom saw non-Western peoples and lands as threatening, pagan, and hostile. The result is association simultaneous with disassociation.

He is able to see the alien society, able to gain some understanding of its practices, yet the understanding is distorted and facile. Quaint histories result with reports of "a sect in Orissa who worship the Queen of England as their chief divinity." Then there is

a sect in the Punjab [who] worshipped a deity whom they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen was no other than the redoubted General Nicholson, and nothing that the general could do or say damped the enthusiasm of his adorers. The more he punished them, the greater grew the religious awe with which they worshipped him.

Frazer and Nicholson present themselves as superior and stand amazed and contemptuous when their superiority mirrors itself in the behavior of the observed. There is affiliation—the contact of the adored or of the scientist hovering above his subjects—but the observer is distant and apart. He separates himself from the objects of his study and reports a people who are less than human, or at least less than English.

The canon of the uncivilized reads like a litany of Britain's late Victorian prejudices—prejudices that Frazer does not hesitate to carry through when he interprets his sources. It includes not only the obvious "barbarous" races—the "bush negroes of Surinam," the "heathen Syrians," the Jews, and the Catholic Irish. It also includes "the semi-barbarous nations of the New World" in addition to French, Swedish, and Austrian peasants. In short, anyone outside the British aristocratic and merchant classes is seen as a quaint storehouse of antiquated beliefs and traditions. It is the world of Kipling—characters from Kim and The Jungle Book who hold the secrets of the dark natural world, and it is the theater of Boucicault—the blacks of Jessie Brown or the stage Irishman happy in his drunken ignorance.

"The language implies a crude and simple culture populated by ignorant and brutal people whose form of worship is nothing more than a wasteland because it lacks a Christian framework. By today's standards Frazer's methodology for examining the subjects of his analysis seems absurd.…"

Frazer's vocabulary of association betrays the same type of prejudices and implies a systematic, if half-conscious, demeaning of non-English cultures. Images of "rude peoples all over the world" are paraded before a reader. We are shown examples of "primitive superstition and religion" taken from the "Old Heathen days." We see the representatives of the "savage hordes," and the "unfortunate beings" who are still taken by the "quaint superstition" and the "antique fancies" of "savage philosophers" that are nothing more than "cobwebs of the brain." The language implies a crude and simple culture populated by ignorant and brutal people whose form of worship is nothing more than a wasteland because it lacks a Christian framework. By today's standards Frazer's methodology for examining the subjects of his analysis seems absurd, but this tendency characterized cultural studies in the late nineteenth century.

It distorts the objects of Frazer's study just as his choice of sources does. However, Frazer is aware of the possible harm of such an approach. He warns that "in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to give them the benefit of that indulgence which we may one day stand in need of ourselves." Frazer begs indulgence for an inferiority he has conjured from the Victorian framework of analysis. He calls ceremonies rude if "no special class of persons is set aside for the performance of the rites," if "no special places are set apart" for the rituals, if "spirits not gods are recognized," and if "the rites are magical rather than propitiatory." It seems that difference implies inferiority and that these practices are only valued for their influence on civilized religion and have no import in and of themselves.

Yet there seems to be another value, produced as a consequence of the distortions and prejudices, only implicit in Frazer's analysis—the value of lost traditions harboring secret associations. He seems to relish "the days when Diana and Virbius still received the homage of their worshippers in the sacred grove." Even though "the temple of Diana … has disappeared, and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough," Frazer muses that "Nemi's woods are still green, and at evening you may hear the church bells of Albano, and perhaps, if the air be still, of Rome itself, ringing the Angeles." The old gods are still summoned, and Frazer's work is a type of summoning—an effort to conjure the sublime. It is as if the primitive and savage races can tap into a hidden power of the world, as if they can find a communion with nature that is beyond Frazer's grasp. He is like William Sharp who needed to conjure Fiona Macleod to contact the natural world, but, for both men, the posturings of assumed superiority distort the contact.

There is a sense of loss in Sharp and in Frazer, a sense of disconnectedness. Each wants to "partake of the new corn sacramentally" but can only do so through what they see as an inferior—a woman or a savage people. Le roi est mort, but there is no new king. There are only the delusions of the heathen—the "primitive man" who "fancies he can make the sun to shine, and can hasten or stay its going down," or "the savage" who "commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or behind the phenomena." The world is alive, is animate, for the uncivilized—for "the prettiest girl" in "the south-east of Ireland [who] on May Day … used to be chosen Queen of the district for twelve months. She was crowned with wild flowers; feasting, dancing, and rustic sports followed, and were closed by a grand procession in the evening." However, for Frazer, a world of emptiness and isolation dominates.

In 1909 he would write, in the preface to a volume of biblical passages selected for their literary interest, that

though many of us can no longer, like our fathers, find in its pages the solution of the dark, the inscrutable riddle of human existence, yet the volume must be held sacred by all who reverence the high aspirations to which it gives utterance, and the pathetic associations with which the faith and piety of so many have invested the familiar words.

The words are seen as fragments of a lost tradition, of a lost contact. Frazer cannot see that it is his distortions, his assumed superiority, that has caused the separation and the consequent isolation.

There are other possible reasons for the sense of disconnectedness in his work. Among them is Frazer's method of examining his information. All of it is, somehow, made to support some aspect of the Nemi tradition. A world of customs and practices is laid out before him. His survey begins with "The King of the Wood." This does not necessarily mean the king of the Arician woods; any king or queen will do. Specifically, he mentions Diana and others. They have the attributes of a tree spirit or sylvan deity—they can control the weather or the state of wildlife and vegetation. Frazer then goes on to show that there is a sympathetic connection between the king and his kingdom. The ruler is subject to restrictions to help preserve it. If he should hurt himself the kingdom would suffer. Therefore, people would often subject their ruler to occasional trials, tests of wit and strength. If the king failed, his soul and the soul of the forest would be transferred to a successor; the king's soul would often be kept in some object for safekeeping until the trial was over. Numerous examples are cited, including Osiris and Dionysus. Their deaths and regenerations are supposed to be modelled on the pattern of the seasons. After superficial consideration, his study seems to develop fascinating relationships between a diversity of cultures.

However, each of these points simply develops a part of Frazer's Nemi thesis; they have limited value independently. Diana and the sylvan deities are mentioned because Aricia is a wooded area, and the King of the Wood is a manifestation of the tree spirit. The sympathetic connection between the king and his kingdom is important to the Nemi tradition because its king must survive occasional trials by combat to ensure his health and the consequent health of the woods. The notion of the external soul supports Nemi because the golden bough itself is the mistletoe where the king's soul is kept. These are the primary relationships between the plethora of cultural practices. All other connections are incidental to the Nemi tradition.

Consequently, on one level Frazer's study is simply a collection of fragments designed to serve Nemi. Certainly The Golden Bough represents much more than that; therein lies the danger of his approach. The various customs and individuals are dispossessed from their culture. Their relationship and unity must rely on the validity of Frazer's thesis because they cannot rely on the validity supplied by their respective societies. Obviously, a tradition cannot stand on its own merits if examined out of context. In subsequent editions of The Golden Bough Frazer downplays the role of Nemi and discredits his thesis, but his analysis retains the same structure. It continues to serve Nemi even after Nemi is removed. A collection of lost fragments remains to serve an invalid hypothesis.

The major component of this lost service is the cycle of death and rebirth modelled on the seasons:

The annual death and revival of vegetation is a conception which readily presents itself to men in every stage of savagery and civilization; and the vastness of the scale on which this yearly decay and regeneration takes place, together with man's intimate dependence on it for subsistence, combine to render it the most striking annual phenomenon in nature, at least within the temperate zones. It is no wonder that a phenomenon so important, so striking, and so universal should, by suggesting similar ideas, have given rise to similar rites in many lands.

This motif rises again and again throughout Frazer's study. It appears in the Arician grove; in the persons of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris; in the corn spirit; and in the folk-tales and folk-customs of Europe.

However, Frazer destroys this continuity by classifying and ranking the various traditions. He feels that "the spring and harvest customs of our European peasantry deserve to rank as primitive," that "the writings even of these town-bred and cultured persons afford us an occasional glimpse of a Demeter as rude as the rudest that a remote German village can show," and that "the Indians of California, who, living in a fertile country under a serene and temperate sky, nevertheless rank near the bottom of the savage scale." Just as J. A. Cramb and the members of James Hunt's Anthropological Society distorted Darwin to create a human hierarchy, Frazer distorts an evolution in beliefs—a simple alteration of customs in response to environmental stimuli—to create an image of progress.

This classification results in Frazer's isolation. He stands on top of an evolutionary pyramid. Below him is the history of the world. Above him is an abyss of future uncertainty. Around him is the British Empire spread out in its imperial assurance. Specifically, Frazer outlines the progress from magic to religion to science. He sees magic "as the hope of directing the course of nature by his [mankind's] own unaided resources." Religion occurs when man "looks more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them … Therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual." "Still later, the conception of the elemental forces as personal agents" gives way "to the recognition of natural law." The former unity of worship of the death and regeneration of the seasons has given way to the rigidity of superiority.

Like a young Rajah, Frazer travels through the capitals of the world's major religious movements—the tribal villages of Africa, the primeval forests of Europe, the pastoral landscapes of ancient Egypt, the temples of classical Greece and Rome—classifying and organizing them into his complex framework and analysis. Darkest Africa and the Australian outback continue to function on the level of magic. Societies involved in totemism, like the Indians of the Americas, do have a "religion," but it is the most primitive type because it entails worshiping trees or wild animals. Communities that worship cattle or other domesticated creatures have "graduated" to a pastoral religion. The highest form of primitive worship is practiced by the agricultural societies, but even this final stage has two parts. On one level gods are seen as imminent spirits residing in cultivated plants, especially corn. On the second level, the Deists, spirits are transcendent like the gods of Greece and Rome. Christianity comes next. It retains some barbarous elements—the tran-substantiation of the Catholic Mass, the sacrifice of the son of God—but is, for the most part, civilized. All these movements culminate in science and scientific reasoning. Frazer assembles and disseminates the world, tracing the origins of cultured society.

However, like the Germany of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Frazer keeps the world a "country of the mind." With rare exception he relies on the work and the stories of various scholars and colonial representatives. As he recognizes the danger of judging "rude and savage races," Frazer acknowledges the danger of not considering living testimony. He writes that "compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion is worth very little." However, just as his judgments on prejudice fail to permeate the depths of his analysis, Frazer's observations fail to escape "the course of" his "reading." He takes the field work of Mannhardt and Tyler, or Wilken and Gregor, and shapes it to his specifications for the history of religion and worship.

Consequently, his vast storehouse of information contains fragments of traditions that tend to support late Victorian conventions. Frazer assembles his catalogue of religious practices in such a way as to position the scientific and cultural achievements of the late nineteenth century as a point toward which all converges. Certainly, such notions of superiority are not limited to Frazer. In 1866 Luke Owen Pike posited the English at the top of an evolutionary hierarchy in The English and Their Origin. In 1870 Sir John Lubbock, in a book titled The Origin of Civilization, traced a progressive evolution similar to Frazer's. Victorian scientists and scholars accepted as fact the belief that man evolved from savagery to barbarism to civilization. Consequently, Frazer and his colleagues stand in self-imposed exile, isolated by the burdens of assumed superiority.

Obviously, both the method and the object of Frazer's inquiries find many models in the world he knew. The longing for a communion with a wider world, a world animate and alive, consumes vast portions of late Victorian society. Oscar Wilde asks to be taken from darkness—

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee.
Gerard Manley Hopkins asks his God to notice banks and brakes Now, leaved how thick! laced they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

In addition, the rise of psychical research and a fascination with the occult are widespread, taking in both the uneducated and the highly educated. People are looking for lost gods, lost meanings, lost contacts. In a passage reminiscent of Frazer, Yeats writes that he

planned a mystical Order which should buy or hire the castle, and keep it as a place where its members could retire for a while for contemplation, and where we might establish mysteries like those of Eleusis and Samo-thrace … I did not think this philosophy would be altogether pagan, for it was plain that its symbols must be selected from all those things that had moved men most during many, mainly Christian, centuries.

In many ways The Golden Bough is an altar prepared for the sacrifice waiting for its priest, and Frazer's worldwide inquiries are a searching or a summoning. However, as with Tristan, the cry comes back, "oed' und leer das Meer."

The origins of the lost connections lie deep in the Victorian consciousness. They can be discerned by examining the elements that keep Frazer at a distance from the objects of his inquiries—the assurance of empire, the certain superiority, the systematic demeaning of other cultures, and the manipulation of countless societies and traditions. There are Darwin and the industrial revolution making the old gods obsolete; there are Nicholson and Cardigan leading countless to a death for Queen and country, and for a peerage; and there is the Earl of Lucan insisting that "the population must be reduced" as skeletons and typhus grow in Ireland. Contact exists, but it is the contact of the master and the lash.

As a consequence, emptiness remains. As in Eliot's wasteland, there is talking but no communication. There is "A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead trees give no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water." Only F. Scott Fitzgerald's "valley of ashes" is left—

a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-gray men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

The wastelands of the twenties were bred in the Arden and the Somme, but their tragedy was simply the final scene in the final act of the play of empire.

Source:

Bernard McKenna, "Isolation and the Sense of Assumed Superiority in Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough," in Nineteenth-Century Prose, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 49-59.

Sources

Hyman, Stanley Edgar, "What Do You Dance?," in The Tangled Bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer, and Freud as Imaginative Writers, Atheneum, 1962, pp. 212-32.

Malinowski, Bronislaw, "Sir James George Frazer," in A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays, University of North Carolina Press, 1944, pp. 177-221.

Review of The Golden Bough, in the Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 3, No. 40, October—December 1890, pp. 316-9.