The Golden Bough - The Roots of Religion and Folklore (Development of Man's Behavior From the Dawn of Human Thought Through Civilized Times) [The Only Unabridged Illustrated Edition]

Sir James George Frazer rocked the late nineteenth century and deeply moved the shapers of modern culture with The Golden Bough. The whole world of myth, folklore, and primitive customs are his subject in this book that even Sigmund Freud and T.S. Eliot read with profit. This extraordinary work covers the development of man's behavior from the dawn of human thought through civilized times. Frazer started out to explain the ritualized fight to the death of the king of a sacred grove in ancient Italy, slain by a runaway slave carrying a golden bough. But he went much further. Among his topics are magic and witchcraft, taboos and sexual rites, the nature of the soul and of religion, scapegoats and human sacrifice, and legends such as that of another golden bough, one that gave Virgil's hero Aeneas entry to the underworld and access to its secrets. Frazer explored a multitude of myths and folktales across culture and centuries, and discovered that many showed striking similarities. Frazer's first edition is here republished and for the first time with fine and rare illustrations from worldwide sources, many from naturalists and artists contemporary with Frazer. His writing has been widely praised for the depth of its insight into cultures far distant in time and space and for the beauty and power of its language.