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Sir James George Frazer 〔 (; 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941), was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion.〔Mary Beard, "Frazer, Leach, and Virgil: The Popularity (and Unpopularity) of the Golden Bough," ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'', 34.2 (April 1992:203–224).〕 He is often considered one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology. His most famous work, ''The Golden Bough'' (1890), documents and details the similarities among magical and religious beliefs around the globe. Frazer posited that human belief progressed through three stages: primitive magic, replaced by religion, in turn replaced by science. ==Biography== Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Frazer attended school at Springfield Academy and Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh.〔Jaques Waardenburg. 1999. ''Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research,'' Volume I: ''Introduction and Anthology'', p244. New York : Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016328-4〕 He studied at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with honours in Classics (his dissertation was published years later as ''The Growth of Plato's Ideal Theory'') and remained a Classics Fellow all his life. From Trinity, he went on to study law at the Middle Temple, but never practised. Four times elected to Trinity's Title Alpha Fellowship, he was associated with the college for most of his life, except for a year, 1907–1908, spent at the University of Liverpool. He was knighted in 1914, and a public lectureship in social anthropology at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow and Liverpool was established in his honour in 1921.〔(Address to Sir James George Frazer on the occasion of the foundation, in his honour, of the Frazer Lectureship in Social Anthropology in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow and Liverpool (1920) ).〕 He was, if not blind, then severely visually impaired from 1930 on. He and his wife, Lily, died within a few hours of each other. They are buried at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge, England. The study of myth and religion became his areas of expertise. Except for visits to Italy and Greece, Frazer was not widely travelled. His prime sources of data were ancient histories and questionnaires mailed to missionaries and imperial officials all over the globe. Frazer's interest in social anthropology was aroused by reading E. B. Tylor's ''Primitive Culture'' (1871) and encouraged by his friend, the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, who was comparing elements of the Old Testament with early Hebrew folklore. Frazer was the first scholar to describe in detail the relations between myths and rituals. His theories of totemism were superseded by the work of the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, who developed the concept of structuralism. His vision of the annual sacrifice of the Year-King has not been borne out by field studies. His generation's choice of Darwinian evolution as a social paradigm, interpreted by Frazer as three stages of human progress—magic giving rise to religion, then culminating in science—has not proved valid.〔See social darwinism and human progress.〕 Yet ''The Golden Bough'', his study of ancient cults, rites, and myths, including their parallels in early Christianity, is still studied by modern mythographers for its detailed information. The first edition, in two volumes, was published in 1890. The third edition was finished in 1915 and ran to twelve volumes, with a supplemental thirteenth volume added in 1936. He published a single-volume abridged version, largely compiled by his wife Lady Frazer, in 1922, with some controversial material on Christianity excluded from the text.〔For the history of ''The Golden Bough'' see R. Fraser, ''The Making of The Golden Bough: The Origins and Growth of an Argument'' (London, 1990).〕 The work's influence extended well beyond the conventional bounds of academia, inspiring the new work of psychologists and psychiatrists. Sigmund Freud cited ''Totemism and Exogamy'' frequently in his own ''Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics''.〔Sigmund Freud, ''Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Life of Savages and Neurotics,'' trans., A.A. Brill (London: Routledge and Sons, 1919), p. 4〕 The symbolic cycle of life, death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of many peoples captivated a generation of artists and poets. Perhaps the most notable product of this fascination is T. S. Eliot's poem ''The Waste Land'' (1922). Also Jim Morrison in his "Celebration of the Lizard" (finally titled "Not to Touch the Earth" as a song within the Waiting for the Sun album of 1968) included lyrics such as "not to touch the earth, not to see the sun"; sentences which serve as chapter titles in Frazer's work. More recently, Frazer's work influenced the ending of Francis Ford Coppola's film, ''Apocalypse Now'' (1979) (a copy of ''The Golden Bough'' is shown in one of the final shots). Frazer's pioneering work〔"For those who see Frazer's work as the start of anthropological study in its modern sense, the site and the cult of Nemi must hold a particular place: This colourful but minor backwater of Roman religion marks the source of the discipline of Social anthropology", remarks Mary Beard, in noting the critical reassessment of Frazer's work following Edmund Leach, "Frazer, Leach, and Virgil: The Popularity (and Unpopularity) of the Golden Bough," ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'', 34.2 (April 1992:203–224), p. 204.〕 has been criticised by late 20th-century scholars. For instance, in the 1980s Edmund Leach wrote a series of critical articles, one of which was featured as the lead in ''Anthropology Today'', vol. 1 (1985).〔Leach, "Reflections on a visit to Nemi: did Frazer get it wrong?", ''Anthropology Today'' 1 (1985)〕 He criticised ''The Golden Bough'' for the breadth of comparisons drawn from widely separated cultures, but often based his comments on the abridged edition, which omits the supportive archaeological details. In a positive review of a book narrowly focused on the ''cultus'' in the Hittite city of Nerik, J. D. Hawkins remarked approvingly in 1973, "The whole work is very methodical and sticks closely to the fully quoted documentary evidence in a way that would have been unfamiliar to the late Sir James Frazer."〔Hawkins, reviewing Volkert Haas, ''Der Kult von Nerik: ein Beitrag zur hethitischen Religionsgeschichte'', in ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London'' 36.1 (1973:128).〕 Another important work by Frazer is his six-volume commentary on the Greek traveller Pausanias' description of Greece in the mid-2nd century AD. Since his time, archaeological excavations have added enormously to the knowledge of ancient Greece, but scholars still find much of value in his detailed historical and topographical discussions of different sites, and his eyewitness accounts of Greece at the end of the 19th century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James George Frazer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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