I’m really excited that A Century of
James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: Shaking the Tree, Breaking the Bough,
edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Caroline J. Tully is now available forpre-order. This is the book that was produced from the online conference “Shaking
the Tree, Breaking the Bough: Frazer’s Golden Bough at 100”.
This multidisciplinary volume examines
the ongoing effects of James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough in modern Humanities
and its wide-ranging influence across studies of ancient religions, literature,
historiography and reception studies.
It begins by exploring the life and
times of Frazer himself and the writing of The Golden Bough in its cultural
milieu. The volume then goes on to cover a wide range of topics, including:
ancient Near Eastern religion and culture; Minoan religion and in particular
the origins of notions of Minoan matriarchy; Frazer’s influence on the study of
Graeco-Roman religion and magic; Frazer’s influence on modern Pagan religions;
and the effects of Frazer’s works in modern culture and scholarship generally.
Chapters examine how modern academia – and beyond – continues to be influenced
by the otherwise discredited theories in The Golden Bough, ideas such as Sacred
Marriage and the incessant Fertility of Everything. The book demonstrates how
scholarship within the Humanities as well as practitioners of alternative
religions and the common public remain under the thrall of Frazer over one
hundred years since the publication of the abridged edition of The Golden
Bough, and what we must do to shake off that influence.
A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden
Bough is of interest to scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines,
including Ancient History, History of Religion, Comparative Religion, Classical
Studies, Archaeology, Historiography, Anthropology, Folklore, and Reception
Studies.
Table of Contents
Preliminaries
1. The Golden Bough: setting the scene –
Tim Parkin
2. Sir James Frazer and The Golden Bough
– Ronald Hutton
3. “Off With His Head!”: Wilhelm
Mannhardt’s Wald- und Feldkulte at the Roots of The Golden Bough - Frederico
Delgado Rosa
4. The Golden Bough and the Press –
Julia Phillips
5. Hypothesis as Theory: The Golden
Bough and the Obstinate Nostrums in Religious Studies and the Humanities – Ryan
C. Chester
Ancient Near East
6. Ištar’s Sexual Agency in Akkadian
Love Literature – Martti Nissinen
7. Dying and Rising Gods in Ancient
Mesopotamian Religion and the Frazerian Paradigm of Fertility Religion – JoAnn
Scurlock
8. The Fads that Drive Us: From Frazer,
Freud, and Foucault to Butler and Connell – Stephanie Lynn Budin
9. The Hebrew Bible Scapegoat:
Complicating a Frazerian Typology – Caroline Ward-Smith
Aegean and Classical
10. Embracing the Goddess: Evans and the
Minoan feminine divine – Christine Morris
11. Guess Who’s Back, Back Again?
Graeber and Wengrow’s Resurrection of Minoan Matriarchy in ‘The Dawn of
Everything’ – Stephen O’Brien
12. Same same, but different: Frazer’s
Sympathetic Law of Similarity and the study of Greco-Roman defixiones – Saskia
Moorrees
13. Reading about Nymphs and Roman
Soldiers with and without Frazer – Isabel Köster
Pagan Studies
14. Surviving Frazerisms: twenty-first
century Witchcraft and the eternal return – Helen Cornish
15. Moon and Huntress: Frazer’s Arician
Diana in Italian-American Witchcraft – Caroline J. Tully
16. Lilith from Demoness to Mother
Goddess: a Frazerian legacy in French Luciferian Wicca? – Vanessa
Toupin-Lavallée
17. Contemporary Tree Lore and the
Ancient Worship of Trees: The Contributions of James Frazer in the Contemporary
Study of Religion and Ecology – Ive Brissman
The Modern World
18. Derivative and Associative Popular
Frazerism: A Cultural Complex at Work in Late Modern Europe – Alessandro Testa
19. Frazer and the Magical Oath – Fritz
Lampe
Coda
20. Diana’s Mirror: The Reflective Surface of Frazer’s The Golden Bough – Robert Fraser
