The Golden Bough
Despite the controversy generated by the work, and its critical reception amongst other scholars, "The Golden Bough" inspired much of the creative literature of the period. The poet Robert Graves adapted Frazer's concept of the dying king sacrificed for the good of the kingdom to the romantic idea of the poet's suffering for the sake of his Muse-Goddess, as reflected in his book on poetry, rituals, and myths, "The White Goddess" (1948). William Butler Yeats refers to Frazer's thesis in his poem "Sailing to Byzantium". The horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's understanding of religion was influenced by "The Golden Bough", and Lovecraft mentions the book in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu". T. S. Eliot acknowledged indebtedness to Frazer in his first note to his poem "The Waste Land". William Carlos Williams refers to "The Golden Bough" in Book Two, part two, of his extended poem in five books "Paterson". "The Golden Bough" influenced Sigmund Freud's work "Totem and Taboo" (1913). Frazer's work also influenced the psychiatrist Carl Jung and the novelists James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Gaddis and D. H. Lawrence.