Since the publication ofThe Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss."[6] He gained recognition in Hollywood whenGeorge Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing hisStar Wars saga.[7]
Joseph Campbell was born inWhite Plains, New York,[8] on March 26, 1904, the elder son of hosiery importer and wholesaler[9] Charles William Campbell, fromWaltham, Massachusetts, and Josephine (née Lynch), from New York.[10][11] Campbell was raised in anupper-middle-classIrish Catholic family; he related that his paternal grandfather Charles had been "a peasant" who came to Boston fromCounty Mayo in Ireland, and became the gardener and caretaker at theLyman Estate at Waltham, where his son Charles William Campbell grew up and became a successful salesman at a department store prior to establishing his hosiery business.[12][13] During his childhood, he moved with his family toNew Rochelle, New York. In 1919, a fire destroyed the family home in New Rochelle, killing his maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who tried to save her.[14][15]
On his return to Columbia University in 1929, Campbell expressed a desire to pursue the study ofSanskrit andmodern art in addition tomedieval literature. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from graduate studies. Later in life he jested that it is a sign of incompetence to have a PhD in theliberal arts, the discipline covering his work.[20]
With the arrival of theGreat Depression, Campbell spent the next five years (1929–1934) living in a rented shack inWoodstock, New York.[21] There, hecontemplated the next course of his life[22] while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. He later said that he "would divide the day into four three-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the three-hour periods, and free one of them ... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight."[23]
Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–1932), continuing his independent studies and becoming a close friend of the budding writerJohn Steinbeck and his wife Carol. Campbell had met Carol's sister, Idell, on a Honolulu cruise and she introduced him to the Steinbecks. Campbell had an affair with Carol.[24][25] On theMonterey Peninsula, Campbell, like John Steinbeck, fell under the spell of themarine biologistEd Ricketts (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novelCannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels).[26] Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along withXenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey toJuneau, Alaska on theGrampus.[27] Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as a hero but, unlike Steinbeck, did not complete his book.[28]
Bruce Robison writes that
Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape. ... Campbell, the great chronicler of the "hero's journey" inmythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublishedphilosophical essays. Echoes ofCarl Jung,Robinson Jeffers andJames Joyce can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell.[29]
Campbell continued his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at theCanterbury School inConnecticut, during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction. While teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short storyStrictly Platonic toLiberty magazine.[30][31]
In 1934, Campbell accepted a position as Professor of Literature atSarah Lawrence College inYonkers, New York. In 1938, he married one of his former students, thedancer-choreographerJean Erdman. For most of their 49 years of marriage they shared a two-room apartment inGreenwich Village in New York City. In the 1980s they also purchased an apartment inHonolulu and divided their time between the two cities. They did not have any children.
Early inWorld War II, Campbell attended a lecture by theIndologistHeinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell was given the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, which he would do over the following decade.
In 1955–1956, as the last volume of Zimmer's posthumoustreatise,TheArt of Indian Asia, ItsMythology and Transformations, was finally about to be published, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College and traveled, for the first time, to Asia. He spent six months in southern Asia (mostly India) and another six inEast Asia (mostly Japan). This year had aprofound influence on his thinking aboutAsian religion andmyth, and also on the necessity for teachingcomparative mythology to a larger, non-academic audience.[32]
In 1972, Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years.
Campbell attended aGrateful Dead concert in 1986, and marveled that "Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!" With Grateful Dead, Campbell put on a conference called "Ritual andRapture fromDionysus to the Grateful Dead".[33]
Campbell died at his home inHonolulu, Hawaii, on October 30, 1987, from complications ofesophageal cancer.[34][35] Before his death he had completed filming the series of interviews withBill Moyers that aired the following spring asThe Power of Myth. He is buried in O'ahu Cemetery, Honolulu.
Campbell often referred to the work of modern writersJames Joyce andThomas Mann in his lectures and writings, as well as to the art ofPablo Picasso. He was introduced to their work during his stay as a graduate student in Paris. Campbell eventually corresponded with Mann.[36]
The "follow your bliss" philosophy attributed to Campbell following the original broadcast ofThe Power of Myth (see below) derives from theHinduUpanishads; however, Campbell was possibly also influenced by the 1922Sinclair Lewis novelBabbitt. InThe Power of Myth, Campbell quotes from the novel:
Campbell: Have you ever readSinclair Lewis'Babbitt? Moyers: Not in a long time. Campbell: Remember the last line? "I've never done a thing I wanted to do in all my life." That's the man who never followed his bliss.[38]
Campbell's ideas regarding myth and its relation to thehuman psyche are dependent in part on the pioneering work ofSigmund Freud, but in particular on the work of Jung, whose studies ofhuman psychology greatly influenced Campbell. Campbell's conception of myth is closely related to theJungian method ofdream interpretation, which is heavily reliant onsymbolic interpretation. Jung's insights intoarchetypes were heavily influenced by theBardo Thodol (also known asThe Tibetan Book of the Dead). In his bookTheMythicImage, Campbell quotes Jung's statement about theBardo Thodol, that it
belongs to that class of writings which not only are of interest to specialists inMahayana Buddhism, but also, because of their deep humanity and still deeperinsight into the secrets of thehuman psyche, make an especial appeal to thelayman seeking to broaden his knowledge of life ... For years, ever since it was first published, theBardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights.[39]
Campbell's concept ofmonomyth (one myth) refers to the theory that sees allmythicnarratives as variations of a single great story. The theory is based on the observation that a common pattern exists beneath the narrative elements of most great myths, regardless of their origin or time of creation. Campbell often referred to the ideas ofAdolf Bastian and his distinction between what he called "folk" and "elementary" ideas, the latter referring to the prime matter of monomyth while the former to the multitude of local forms the myth takes in order to remain an up-to-date carrier ofsacred meanings. The central pattern most studied by Campbell is often referred to as "the hero's journey" and was first described inThe Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).[40] An enthusiast of novelistJames Joyce,[41] Campbell borrowed the term "monomyth" from Joyce'sFinnegans Wake.[42] Campbell also made heavy use ofCarl Jung's theories on the structure of thehuman psyche, and he often used terms such asanima, animus andego consciousness.
As a strong believer in thepsychic unity of mankind and itspoetic expression through mythology, Campbell made use of theconcept to express the idea that the whole of the human race can be seen as engaged in the effort of making the world"transparent to transcendence" by showing that underneath the world ofphenomena lies an eternal source which is constantly pouring its energies into this world of time, suffering, and ultimately death. To achieve this task one needs to speak about things that existed before and beyond words, a seemingly impossible task, the solution to which lies in themetaphors found in myths. These metaphors are statements that point beyond themselves into thetranscendent. The Hero's Journey was the story of the man or woman who, through great suffering, reached an experience of the eternal source and returned with gifts powerful enough to set their society free.
As this story spread through space and evolved through time, it was broken down into various local forms (masks), depending on thesocial structures and environmental pressures that existed for the culture that interpreted it. The basic structure, however, has remained relatively unchanged and can be classified using the various stages of a hero's adventure through the story, stages such asthe Call to Adventure, Receiving Supernatural Aid, Meeting with theGoddess/Atonement with the Father andReturn. These stages, as well as the symbols one encounters throughout the story, provide the necessarymetaphors to express the spiritual truths the story is trying to convey. Metaphors for Campbell, in contrast withsimiles which make use of the wordlike, pretend to a literal interpretation of what they are referring to, as in the sentence "Jesus is the Son ofGod" rather than "the relationship of man to God islike that of a son to a father".[43]
In the 1987 documentaryJoseph Campbell: A Hero's Journey, he explains God in terms of a metaphor:
God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being. Those are categories of thought. I mean it's as simple as that. So it depends on how much you want to think about it. Whether it's doing you any good. Whether it is putting you in touch with the mystery that's the ground of your own being. If it isn't, well, it's a lie. So half the people in the world are religious people who think that their metaphors are facts. Those are what we call theists. The other half are people who know that the metaphors are not facts. And so, they're lies. Those are theatheists.[44]
Campbell often described mythology as having a fourfold function within human society. These appear at the end of his workThe Masks of God: Creative Mythology, as well as various lectures.[45]
Awakening and maintaining in the individual a sense ofawe andgratitude before the 'mystery of being' and his or her participation in it
According to Campbell, the absolute mystery of life, what he calledtranscendent reality, cannot be captured directly in words or images. Symbols and mythic metaphors on the other hand point outside themselves and into that reality. They are what Campbell called "being statements"[45] and their enactment through ritual can give to the participant a sense of that ultimate mystery as an experience. "Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion.... The first function of mythology is to reconcile wakingconsciousness to themysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universeas it is."[46]
Forpre-modern societies, myth also functioned as aproto-science, offering explanations for the physical phenomena that surrounded and affected their lives, such as the change of seasons and the life cycles of animals and plants.
Ancient societies had to conform to an existing social order if they were to survive at all. This is because they evolved under "pressure" from necessities much more intense than the ones encountered in our modern world. Mythology confirmed that order and enforced it by reflecting it into the stories themselves, often describing how the order arrived fromdivine intervention. Campbell often referred to these "conformity" myths as the"Right Hand Path" to reflect the brain's lefthemisphere's abilities forlogic, order andlinearity. Together with these myths however, he observed the existence of the"Left Hand Path", mythic patterns like the"Hero's Journey" which are revolutionary in character in that they demand from the individual a surpassing ofsocial norms and sometimes even of morality.[47]
As a person goes through life, many psychological challenges will be encountered. Myth may serve as a guide for successful passage through the stages of one's life.
Campbell's view of mythology was by no means static and his books describe in detail how mythologies evolved through time, reflecting the realities in which each society had to adjust.[a] Various stages ofcultural development have different yet identifiable mythological systems. In brief these are:
The Way of the Animal Powers
Hunting and gathering societies
At this stage ofevolution, religion wasanimistic, as all of nature was seen as being infused with a spirit ordivine presence. At center stage was the main hunting animal of that culture, whether thebuffalo for Native Americans or theeland for South African tribes, and a large part of religion focused on dealing with the psychological tension that came from the reality of the necessity to kill versus thedivinity of the animal. This was done by presenting the animals as springing from an eternalarchetypal source and coming to this world aswilling victims, with the understanding that their lives would be returned to the soil or to the Mother through a ritual of restoration.[48] The act of slaughter then becomes aritual where both parties, animal and mankind, are equal participants. InMythos andThe Power of Myth,[49] Campbell recounts the story he calls "The Buffalo's Wife" as told by the Blackfoot tribe of North America. The story tells of a time when the buffalos stopped coming to the hunting plains, leaving the tribe to starve. The chief's daughter promises to marry the buffalo chief in return for their reappearance, but is eventually spared and taught thebuffalo dance by the animals themselves, through which the spirits of their dead will return to their eternal life source. Indeed, Campbell taught that throughout history mankind has held a belief that all life comes from and returns to another dimension which transcendstemporality, but which can be reached through ritual.
Beginning in the fertile grasslands of theLevant and theFertile Crescent ofMesopotamia in theBronze Age and moving to Europe, the practice of agriculture spread along with a new way of understanding mankind's relationship to the world. At this time the earth was seen as the Mother, and the myths focused around Her life-giving powers. The plant and cultivation cycle was mirrored inreligious rituals which often included human sacrifice, symbolic or literal.[50] The main figures of this system were a female Great Goddess, Mother Earth, and her ever-dying and ever-resurrected son/consort, a male God. At this time the focus was to participate in the repetitive rhythm the world moved in expressed as the four seasons, the birth and death of crops and the phases of the moon. At the center of this motion was the Mother Goddess from whom all life springs and to whom all life returns. This often gave Her a dual aspect as both mother and destroyer.
The Way of the Celestial Lights
The first high civilizations
As the first agricultural societies evolved into the high civilisations ofMesopotamia andBabylonia, the observation of the stars inspired them with the idea that life on earth must also follow a similar mathematically predetermined pattern in which individual beings are but mere participants in an eternal cosmic play. The king was symbolised by the Sun with the golden crown as its main metaphor, while his court were the orbiting planets. The Mother Goddess remained, but her powers were now fixed within the rigid framework of aclockwork universe.
However, two barbarian incursions changed that. As the Indo-European (Aryan) people descended from the north and the Semites swept up from the Arabian desert, they carried with them a male dominated mythology with a warrior god whose symbol was the thunder. As they conquered, mainly due to the superior technology of iron smithing, their mythology blended with and subjugated the previous system of the Earth Goddess. Many mythologies of the ancient world, such as those of Greece, India, and Persia, are a result of that fusion with gods retaining some of their original traits and character but now belonging to a single system. Figures such asZeus andIndra are thunder gods who now interact withDemeter andDionysus, whose ritual sacrifice and rebirth, bearing testament to his pre-Indo-European roots, were still enacted in classical Greece. But for the most part, the focus heavily shifted toward the masculine, with Zeus ascending the throne of the gods and Dionysus demoted to a mere demi-god.
This demotion was very profound in the case of the biblical imagery where the female elements were marginalized to an extreme. Campbell believed that Eve and the snake that tempted her were once fertility gods worshipped in their own right, with the tree of knowledge being theTree of Life.[51] He also found significance in the biblical story of Cain and Abel, with Cain being a farmer whose agrarian offering is not accepted by God, while herder Abel's animal sacrifice is. In the lecture series ofMythos, Campbell speaks of theMysteries of Eleusis in Ancient Greece, where Demeter's journey in the underworld was enacted for young men and women of the time. There he observed that wheat was presented as the ultimate mystery with wine being a symbol of Dionysus, much like in the Christian mysteries where bread and wine are considered to incarnate the body and blood of Jesus. Both religions carry the same "seeded earth" cosmology in different forms while retaining an image of the ever-dying, ever-resurrected God.
The Way of Man
Medieval mythology, romantic love, and the birth of the modern spirit
Campbell recognized that the poetic form of courtly love, carried through medieval Europe by the traveling troubadours, contained a complete mythology in its own right.[52] In The Power of Myth as well as the "Occidental Mythology" volume ofThe Masks of God, Campbell describes the emergence of a new kind of erotic experience as a "person to person" affair, in contrast with the purely physical definition given to Eros in the ancient world and the communal agape found in the Christian religion. An archetypal story of this kind is the legend ofTristan and Isolde which, apart from its mystical function, shows the transition from an arranged-marriage society as practiced in the Middle Ages and sanctified by the church, into the form of marriage by "falling in love" with another person that we recognize today. So what essentially started from a mythological theme has since become a social reality, mainly due to a change in perception brought about by a new mythology – and represents a central foundational manifestation of Campbell's overriding interpretive message, "Follow your bliss."
Campbell believed that in the modern world the function served by formal, traditional mythological systems has been taken on by individual creators such as artists and philosophers.[b] In the works of some of his favorites, such asThomas Mann,Pablo Picasso andJames Joyce, he saw mythological themes that could serve the same life-giving purpose that mythology had once played. Accordingly, Campbell believed the religions of the world to be the various culturally influenced "masks" of the same fundamental, transcendent truths. All religions can bring one to an elevated awareness above and beyond a dualistic conception of reality, or idea of "pairs of opposites" such as being and non-being, or right and wrong. Indeed, he quotes from theRigveda in the preface toThe Hero with a Thousand Faces: "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names."
In 1991, Campbell's widow, choreographerJean Erdman, worked with Campbell's longtime friend and editor,Robert Walter, to create the Joseph Campbell Foundation.
Initiatives undertaken by the JCF include:The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work; the Erdman Campbell Award; the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion and culture; and the collection of Campbell's library and papers housed at the OPUS Archives and Research Center.[53]
George Lucas was the first filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated, following the release of the firstStar Wars film in 1977, that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described inThe Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell's. The linkage betweenStar Wars and Campbell was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image ofLuke Skywalker on the cover.[54] Lucas discusses this influence at great length in the authorized biography of Joseph Campbell,A Fire in the Mind:
I came to the conclusion afterAmerican Graffiti that what's valuable for me is to set standards, not to show people the world the way it is... around the period of this realization… it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology... TheWestern was possibly the last generically Americanfairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction… so that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales,folklore, andmythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books… It was very eerie because in readingThe Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft ofStar Wars was following classic motifs… So I modified my next draft according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent... I went on to readThe Masks of God and many other books.[7]
It was not until after the completion of the originalStar Wars trilogy in 1983, however, that Lucas met Campbell or heard any of his lectures.[55] In 1984, Campbell gave a lecture at thePalace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, with Lucas in the audience, who was introduced through their mutual friendBarbara McClintock. A few years later, Lucas invited Campbell to watch the entireStar Wars trilogy atSkywalker Ranch, which Campbell called "real art".[56] This meeting led to the filming of the 1988 documentaryThe Power of Myth at Skywalker Ranch. In his interviews withBill Moyers, Campbell discusses the way in which Lucas usedThe Hero's Journey in theStar Wars films (IV, V, and VI) to re-invent the mythology for the contemporary viewer. Moyers and Lucas filmed an interview 12 years later in 1999 called theMythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas' films.[57] In addition, theNational Air and Space Museum of theSmithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s calledStar Wars: The Magic of Myth, which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped theStar Wars films.[58]
Many filmmakers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have acknowledged the influence of Campbell's work on their own craft.Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, created a seven-page company memo based on Campbell's work,A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces,[59] which led to the development ofDisney's 1994 filmThe Lion King. Among films that many viewers have recognized as closely following the pattern of the monomyth areThe Matrix series, theBatman series and theIndiana Jones series.[60]Dan Harmon, the creator of the TV showCommunity and co-creator of the TV showRick and Morty, often references Campbell as a major influence. According to him, he uses a "story circle" to formulate every story he writes, in a formulation of Campbell's work.[61] A fictionalized version of Campbell himself appears in the seventh episode of the sixth season ofRick and Morty, "Full Meta Jackrick".[62]
After the explosion of popularity brought on by theStar Wars films andThe Power of Myth, creative artists in many media recognized the potential to use Campbell's theories to try to unlock human responses to narrative patterns. Novelists,[63] songwriters,[64][65] and video game designers[66] have studied Campbell's work in order to better understand mythology—in particular, themonomyth—and its impact.
Dan Brown mentioned in aNew York Times interview that Joseph Campbell's works, particularlyThe Power of Myth andThe Hero with a Thousand Faces, inspired him to create the character ofRobert Langdon.[69]
One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his maxim to "follow your bliss". He derived this idea from theUpanishads:
Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence:Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked.[70]
He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life:
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.[71]
Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s. By the time thatThe Power of Myth was aired in 1988, six months following Campbell's death, "Follow your bliss" was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public – both religious and secular.[72]
During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraginghedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, "I should have said, 'Follow yourblisters.'"[73]
Campbell's approach to myth, a genre offolklore, has been the subject of criticism fromfolklorists, academics who specialize infolklore studies. American folkloristBarre Toelken says that few psychologists have taken the time to become familiar with the complexities of folklore, and that, historically, Jung-influenced psychologists and authors have tended to build complex theories around single versions of a tale that support a theory or a proposal. To illustrate his point, Toelken employsClarissa Pinkola Estés's (1992)Women Who Run with the Wolves, citing its inaccurate representation of the folklore record, and Campbell's "monomyth" approach as another. Regarding Campbell, Toelken writes, "Campbell could construct a monomyth of the hero only by citing those stories that fit his preconceived mold, and leaving out equally valid stories… which did not fit the pattern". Toelken traces the influence of Campbell's monomyth theory into other then-contemporary popular works, such asRobert Bly'sIron John: A Book About Men (1990), which he says suffers from similar source selection bias.[74]
Similarly, American folkloristAlan Dundes was highly critical of both Campbell's approach to folklore, designating him as a "non-expert" and gives various examples of what he considers source bias in Campbell's theories, as well as media representation of Campbell as an expert on the subject of myth in popular culture. Dundes writes, "Folklorists have had some success in publicising the results of our efforts in the past two centuries such that members of other disciplines have, after a minimum of reading, believe they are qualified to speak authoritatively of folkloristic matters. It seems that the world is full of self-proclaimed experts in folklore, and a few, such as Campbell, have been accepted as such by the general public (and public television, in the case of Campbell)". According to Dundes, "there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype".[75]
According to anthropologist Raymond Scupin, "Joseph Campbell's theories have not been well received in anthropology because of his overgeneralizations, as well as other problems."[76]
Campbell's Sanskrit scholarship has been questioned.Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former Sanskrit professor at theUniversity of Toronto, said that he once met Campbell, and that the two "hated each other at sight", commenting that, "When I met Campbell at a public gathering he was quoting Sanskrit verses. He had no clue as to what he was talking about; he had the most superficial knowledge of India but he could use it for his own aggrandizement. I remember thinking: this man is corrupt. I know that he was simplylying about his understanding".[77] According to Richard Buchen, librarian of the Joseph Campbell Collection at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Campbell could not translate Sanskrit well, but worked closely with three scholars who did.[78]
Ellwood observes thatThe Masks of God series "impressed literate laity more than specialists"; he quotes Stephen P. Dunn as remarking that inOccidental Mythology Campbell "writes in a curiously archaic style – full of rhetorical questions, exclamations of wonder and delight, and expostulations directed at the reader, or perhaps at the author's other self – which is charming about a third of the time and rather annoying the rest." Ellwood says that "Campbell was not really a social scientist, and those in the latter camp could tell" and records a concern about Campbell's "oversimplification of historical matters and tendency to make myth mean whatever he wanted it to mean".[79] The criticCamille Paglia, writing inSexual Personae (1990), expressed disagreement with Campbell's "negative critique of fifth-century Athens" inOccidental Mythology, arguing that Campbell missed the "visionary and exalted" androgyny in Greek statues of nude boys.[80] Paglia has written that while Campbell is "a seminal figure for many American feminists", she loathes him for his "mawkishness and bad research." Paglia has called Campbell "mushy" and a "false teacher",[81] and described his work as a "fanciful, showy mishmash".[82]
Campbell has also been accused ofantisemitism by some authors. InTikkun magazine, Tamar Frankiel noted that Campbell called Judaism the "Yahweh Cult" and that he spoke of Judaism in almost exclusively negative terms.[83] In a 1989New York Review of Books article,Brendan Gill accused Campbell of both antisemitism and prejudice against blacks.[84] Gill's article resulted in a series of letters to the editor, some supporting the charge of antisemitism and others defending him. However, according toRobert S. Ellwood, Gill relied on "scraps of evidence, largely anecdotal" to support his charges.[85] In 1991, Masson also accused Campbell of "hidden anti-Semitism" and "fascination with conservative, semifascistic views".[86] Robert A. Segal'sJoseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism offers 70 references.[87]
The first published work that bore Campbell's name wasWhere the Two Came to Their Father (1943),[88] an account of aNavajo ceremony that was performed by singer (medicine man)Jeff King and recorded by artist andethnologistMaud Oakes, recounting the story of two young heroes who go to thehogan of their father, the Sun, and return with the power to destroy the monsters that are plaguing their people.[89] Campbell provided a commentary. He would use this tale through the rest of his career to illustrate both the universal symbols and structures of human myths and the particulars ("folk ideas") ofNative American stories.[90]
As noted above,James Joyce was an important influence on Campbell. Campbell's first important book (withHenry Morton Robinson),A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), is a critical analysis of Joyce's final textFinnegans Wake. In addition, Campbell's seminal work,The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), discusses what Campbell called themonomyth – the cycle of the journey of thehero – a term that he borrowed directly from Joyce'sFinnegans Wake.[42]
From his days in college through the 1940s, Joseph Campbell turned his hand to writing fiction.[91] In many of his later stories (published in the posthumous collectionMythic Imagination) he began to explore the mythological themes that he was discussing in his Sarah Lawrence classes. These ideas turned him eventually from fiction to non-fiction.
Originally titledHow to Read a Myth, and based on the introductory class on mythology that he had been teaching atSarah Lawrence College,The Hero with a Thousand Faces was published in 1949 as Campbell's first foray as a solo author; it established his name outside of scholarly circles and remains, arguably, his most influential work to this day. The book argues thathero stories such asKrishna,Buddha,Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus all share a similar mythological basis.[92] Not only did it introduce the concept of the hero's journey to popular thinking, but it also began to popularize the very idea ofcomparative mythology itself – the study of the human impulse to create stories and images that, though they are clothed in themotifs of a particular time and place, draw nonetheless on universal, eternalthemes. Campbell asserted:
Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives becomes dissolved.[93]
Published between 1959 and 1968, Campbell's four-volume workThe Masks of God covers mythology from around the world, from ancient to modern. WhereThe Hero with a Thousand Faces focused on the commonality of mythology (the "elementary ideas"), the Masks of God books focus upon historical and cultural variations the monomyth takes on (the "folk ideas"). In other words, whereThe Hero with a Thousand Faces draws perhaps more from psychology, the Masks of God books draw more from anthropology and history. The four volumes ofMasks of God are as follows:Primitive Mythology,Oriental Mythology,Occidental Mythology, andCreative Mythology.
At the time of his death, Campbell was in the midst of working on a large-format, lavishly illustrated series titledHistorical Atlas of World Mythology. This series was to build on Campbell's idea, first presented inThe Hero with a Thousand Faces, that myth evolves over time through four stages:
The Way of the Animal Powers – the myths ofPaleolithic hunter-gatherers which focus on shamanism and animal totems.
The Way of the Seeded Earth – the myths ofNeolithic, agrarian cultures which focus upon a mother goddess and associated fertility rites.
The Way of the Celestial Lights – the myths ofBronze Age city-states with pantheons of gods ruling from the heavens, led by a masculine god-king.
The Way of Man – religion and philosophy as it developed after theAxial Age (c. 6th century BCE), in which the mythic imagery of previous eras was made consciously metaphorical, reinterpreted as referring to psycho-spiritual, not literal-historical, matters. This transition is evident in the East inBuddhism,Vedanta, and philosophicalTaoism; and in the West in theMystery cults,Platonism, Christianity andGnosticism.
Only the first volume was completed at the time of Campbell's death. Campbell's editor Robert Walter completed the publication of the first three of five parts of the second volume after Campbell's death. The works are now out of print. As of 2014[update], Joseph Campbell Foundation is currently undertaking to create a new, ebook edition.[94]
Campbell's widest popular recognition followed his collaboration withBill Moyers on thePBS seriesThe Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, the year following Campbell's death. The series discusses mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes. A book,The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast.
TheCollected Works of Joseph Campbell series is a project initiated by theJoseph Campbell Foundation to release new, authoritative editions of Campbell's published and unpublished writing, as well as audio and video recordings of his lectures.[95] Working withNew World Library andAcorn Media UK, as well as publishing audio recordings andebooks under its own banner, as of 2014[update] the project has produced over seventy-five titles. The series's executive editor isRobert Walter, and the managing editor isDavid Kudler.
An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms (1989). Editors John Maher and Dennie Briggs, foreword by Jean Erdman Campbell. Larson Publications, Harper Perennial 1990 paperback:ISBN0-06-097295-5
This business of the gods: Interview with Fraser Boa (Unlicensed – 1989)
The Hero's Journey: A Biographical Portrait – This film, made shortly before his death in 1987, follows Campbell's personal quest – a pathless journey of questioning, discovery, and ultimately of joy in a life to which he said, "Yes."
Sukhavati: A Mythic Journey – This film is a personal, transcendent, and perhaps spiritual portrait of Campbell.
Mythos – This series comprises talks that Campbell himself believed summed up his views on "the one great story of mankind." It is essentially a repackaging of the lectures featured inTransformations of Myth Through Time.
Psyche & Symbol (12-part telecourse, Bay Area Open College, 1976)[c]
^The schema laid out in the following text was one that Campbell explored in many of his works, includingThe Masks of God series; it was the explicit structure of his unfinished masterwork,Historical Atlas of World Mythology.
^This is the central thesis of the last volume ofThe Masks of God series,Creative Mythology.
^The Encyclopaedia of World Biography (2nd ed.). Vol. 3. Brice- Ch'i Pai-Shih, Gale Research. 1998. p. 253.
^The Hero's Journey- Joseph Campbell on his life and works, Centennial Edition, ed. Phil Cousineau, Joseph Campbell Foundation/ New World Library, 2003, p. xxvi
^Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind- The Authorized Biography, Stephen and Robin Larsen, Doubleday, 1991, p. 7
^The Hero's Journey – Joseph Campbell on his life and works, Centennial Edition, ed. Phil Cousineau, Joseph Campbell Foundation/ New World Library, 2003, p. 3
^Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind- The Authorized Biography, Stephen and Robin Larsen, Doubleday, 1991, p. 23
^Faulkner, Larry R. (May 2, 1999)."Excerpts of remarks made at a dinner honoring new Phi Beta Kappa members".Office of the President website. The University of Texas at Austin. RetrievedAugust 13, 2012. Citing a conversation between Campbell andBill Moyers. "There was a wonderful old man up in Woodstock, New York, who had a piece of property he would rent out for twenty dollars a year or so to any young person he thought might have a future in the arts. There was no running water, only here and there a well and a pump. ... That is where I did most of my basic reading and work."
^Souder, William (2020).Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck (1st ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 120.ISBN978-0-393-29226-8.OCLC1137813905.
^Straley, John (November 13, 2011). "Sitka'sCannery Row Connection and the Birth of Ecological Thinking".2011 Sitka WhaleFest Symposium: stories of our changing seas. Sitka, Alaska: Sitka WhaleFest.
——— (2004).Kudler, David (ed.).Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Novato, California: New World Library.
Dundes, Alan (2016)."Folkloristics in the Twenty-First Century" in Haring, Lee. ed. "Grand Theory in Folkloristics". Indiana University Press.ISBN978-0-253-02442-8.
Ellwood, Robert (1999).The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.ISBN978-1-4384-0202-4.
Henderson, Mary (1997)."Star Wars: The Magic of Myth".Star Wars at the National Air and Space Museum (exhibit). Washington: Smithsonian Institution.Archived from the original on April 8, 2010. RetrievedAugust 31, 2018.
Masson, Jeffrey (1991).Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. New York: HarperPerennial.
McCutcheon, Russell T. (2001).Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.ISBN978-0-7914-4944-8.
Amanieux, Laureline (2011).Ce héros qui est en chacun de nous: La puissance des mythes (in French). Paris: Albin Michel.ISBN978-2-226-22147-6.
Erickson, Leslie Goss (2006).Re-Visioning of the Heroic Journey in Postmodern Literature: Toni Morrison, Julia Alvarez, Arthur Miller, and American Beauty. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press.ISBN978-0-7734-5911-3.
Ford, Clyde W. (1999).The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa. New York: Bantam Books (published 2000).ISBN978-0-553-37868-9.
Golden, Kenneth L., ed. (1992).Uses of Comparative Mythology: Essays on the Work of Joseph Campbell. New York: Garland Publishing.ISBN978-0-8240-7092-2.
Joiner, Ann Livingston (2006).A Myth in Action: The Heroic Life of Audie Murphy.
Jones, Steven Swann (2002).The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of the Imagination.
Madden, Lawrence, ed. (1992).The Joseph Campbell Phenomenon: Implications for the Contemporary Church. Washington: Pastoral Press.ISBN978-0-912405-89-6.
Noel, Daniel C., ed. (1994).Paths to the Power of Myth: Joseph Campbell and the Study of Religion. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company.ISBN978-0-8245-1024-4.
"Brendan Gill vs Defenders of Joseph Campbell: An Exchange".The New York Review of Books. Vol. 36, no. 17. 1989.ISSN0028-7504.
Collins, Tom (1986)."Mythic Reflections".In Context. No. 12. North Olympic Living Lightly Association. Archived fromthe original on June 24, 1997. RetrievedSeptember 1, 2018.
Felser, Joseph M. (1998). "Was Joseph Campbell a Postmodernist?".Journal of the American Academy of Religion.64 (2):395–417.doi:10.1093/jaarel/LXIV.2.395.JSTOR1466107.
Friedman, Maurice (1998). "Why Joseph Campbell's Psychologizing of Myth Precludes the Holocaust as Touchstone of Reality".Journal of the American Academy of Religion.66 (2):385–401.doi:10.1093/jaarel/66.2.385.JSTOR1465679.
Gill, Brendan (1989). "The Faces of Joseph Campbell".The New York Review of Books. Vol. 36, no. 14.ISSN0028-7504.
Keen, Sam (1971). "Man and Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell".Psychology Today. Vol. 5. pp. 35–39,86–95.
Kennedy, Eugene (April 15, 1979). "Earthrise: The Dawning of a New Spiritual Awareness".New York Times Magazine.
Kisly, Lorraine (1976). "Living Myths: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell".Parabola. Vol. 1.
Lobel, John (1988). "A Primer on Joseph Campbell and the Mythological Dimensions of Consciousness (Obituary)".Whole Earth Review. No. 59. Sausalito, California.ISSN1097-5268.
McKnight, Michael (1980). "Elders and Guides: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell".Parabola. Vol. 5.
——— (1999). "Joseph Campbell as Antisemite and as Theorist of Myth: A Response to Maurice Friedman".Journal of the American Academy of Religion.67 (2):461–467.doi:10.1093/jaarel/67.2.461.ISSN1477-4585.JSTOR1465746.
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