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Frazer's magic wand of anthropology interpreting ‘The Golden Bough’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Geoffrey Wood
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Extract

‘Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough ?’ asks Sir James Frazer at the beginning of his journey into the underworld of primitive magic and superstition called The Golden Bough. And indeed who does not know Frazer's work itself, if not in the full twelve volumes edition, then in the continually reprinted abridged version, or if not by academic reference then as a popular classic entrenched in modern culture?. This paper re-examines this text according to the presence of two discrepant readings of it. The investigation of this discrepancy makes use of the idea of ‘intertextuality’ according to which meanings of a text are located within the discursive traditions to which the text responds and within which it participates actively in the production of meanings. Superficially, The Golden Bough is easily perceived to occupy a place within a web of discourses: folklore, the history of religion, classical studies, social anthropology, as well as literary criticism and even literature itself. We are concerned here with social anthropology and literature/literary criticism, in terms of their uses and treatments of the work; also, significantly with the object discourse of the work.

Type
Soziologische Selbstbespiegelung
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , May 1982 , pp. 92 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1982

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