ABSTRACT
Geza Roheim’s prolific and exuberant theoretical forays into the worlds of anthropology, psychology, and folklore have met sadly with silence from virtually every quarter since his death in 1953. In several hundred articles and twenty books, Roheim presented a series of ingenious and original studies of cultural products scanning the globe throughout known history. Perhaps Roheim’s uneven style, ranging from lucid to bizarre, has deterred unlucky readers happening on one of his less clear works; yet to be audience to one of the truly original, creative, and underappreciated minds of our century, well merits the effort required to bear patiently Roheim’s considerable idiosyncrasy. Various biographical studies of Roheim’s life and reviews of his work provide a general understanding of his substantial, yet little-recognized, contributions to anthropology. Roheim was the author of a number of important contributions to the field of anthropology, for almost none of which is he remembered.
