Exploring The Waste Land: auxilary text

The Golden Bough

Sir James George Frazer

The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore was written by Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941). The first edition of The Golden Bough was in 1890. This edition had 3 seperate chapters for Adonis, Attis and Osiris but none for The Hanged God.

In Eliot's note to line 46 of The Waste Land he mentions "the Hanged God of Frazer". The Hanged God appears as a chapter in Frazer's third edition of The Golden Bough (1911-1915) but not in the first edition. I think it likely then that Eliot read the third edition.

There was fourth edition in 1922. This edition was condensed down to one volume and many controversial passages were removed. Other information about the various editions of The Golden Bough can be found in the bibliography section at the unframed portion of this web site.



Exploring The Waste Land - [Home] [E-mail] Url: http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/xqbough.html File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002