This Zoom course will be recorded.

The classical scholar Sir James George Frazer first published a two-volume version of his monumental work, The Golden Bough in 1890. Over the years, he enhanced his analysis until his final version, twelve volumes in length appeared between 1906 and 1915. An explosively controversial study when it appeared, it synthesized many mythological traditions, including the mythic structure of The Bible. Since its publications at the close of the nineteenth and commencement of the twentieth centuries, it has become a watershed for analyzing the mythic structures which inform art, literature, and, yes, even consciousness. Even in its condensed single volume form, it is almost a thousand pages long.  We will attempt representative samplings of this truncated version, toward an appreciation of the nature and force of myth, with nods to Joseph Cambell and Marija Gimbutas, among others.