New book! A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough

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