Mythologist and educator, born in New York City, New York, USA. A professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College (193472), he entranced students with his analysis of comparative mythology, writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and Masks of God (4 vols, 195968). Although his scholarship has been criticized, he attained the status of a virtual guru through a series of television interviews by Bill Moyers (19856).
Life
Childhood
Joseph Campbell was born and raised in White Plains, New York in an upper middle class Roman Catholic family. As a child, Campbell became fascinated with Native American culture when his father took him to see the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This led to Campbell's lifelong passion with myth and to his mapping and study of its seemingly cohesive threads among disparate human cultures. Campbell was also an accomplished athlete, receiving awards for track and field.
Europe
In 1927, Campbell received a fellowship provided by Columbia to study in Europe. Campbell studied Old French and Sanskrit at the University of Paris in France and the University of Munich in Germany. Campbell commented on this influence, particularly that of James Joyce, in The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (1990, first edition:28):
CAMPBELL: And then the fact that James Joyce grabbed me. CAMPBELL: His problem was my problem, exactly...Joyce helped release me into an understanding of the universal sense of these symbols .It was within this climate that Campbell was also introduced to the work of Thomas Mann who was equally influential upon his life and ideas. While in Europe Campbell was introduced to modern art. A whole new world opened up to Campbell while studying in Europe. In addition, after the death of Indologist Heinrich Zimmer, Campbell was given the task to edit and posthumously publish Zimmer's papers.
Return to the United States and the Great Depression
On his return from Europe in 1929, Campbell announced to his faculty at Columbia that his time in Europe had broadened his interests and that he wanted to study Sanskrit and Modern art in addition to Medieval literature. When his advisors did not support this, Campbell decided not to go forward with his plans to earn a doctorate and never returned to a conventional graduate program (The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, (1990, first edition:54). Campbell would spend the next five years (1929-1934) trying to figure out what to do with his life (Larsen and Larsen, 2002:160) and engaging in a period of intensive and rigorous independent study. Campbell discussed this period in The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (1990, first edition:52-3). Campbell states that he "would divide the day into four four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four hour periods, and free one of them...I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. Campbell also maintained his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the Canterbury School during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction (Larsen and Larsen, 2002:214) .
Campbell's independent studies lead to greater exploration of the ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, a contemporary and colleague of Sigmund Freud. Campbell edited the first Eranos conference papers and helped to found Princeton University Press' Bollingen Press. Another dissident member of Freud's circle to influence Campbell was Wilhelm Stekel (1868 - 1939).
Sarah Lawrence College
In 1934, Campbell was offered a position as a professor at Sarah Lawrence College (through the efforts of his former Columbia advisor W.W.
Death
Campbell died on October 31, 1987, in Honolulu due to ongoing complications with cancer, shortly after filming The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers.
Select works
James Joyce and early works
As noted above, James Joyce was an important influence on Campbell. Campbell's first important book (with Henry Morton Robinson), A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944), is a critical analysis of Joyce's final text Finnegans Wake. In addition, Campbell's seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, discusses what Campbell termed the monomyth cycle of the journey of the hero, which he directly attributes to Joyce's Finnegans Wake (Campbell, 1949:30).
The Masks of God
His four-volume work The Masks of God covers mythology around the world from ancient to modern.
The Historical Atlas of World Mythology
At the time of Campbell’s death he was producing a large-format, beautifully illustrated series titled The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. This series was to follow Campbell’s idea (first presented in The Hero with a Thousand Faces) that myth evolved over time through four stages: The Way of the Animal Powers (the myths of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers with their focus on shamanism and animal totems), The Way of the Seeded Earth (the myths of Neolithic, agrarian cultures with their focus on the mother goddess and fertility rites), The Way of the Celestial Lights (the myths of Bronze Age city-states with their pantheons of gods up in the heavens), and The Way of Man (religion and philosophy as it developed after the Axial Age).
The Power of Myth
Campbell's widest popular recognition came from his collaboration with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, the year after Campbell's death. In it Campbell writes:"...Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as mis-interpreted mythology." In other words, Campbell did not read religious symbols literally as historical facts, but instead he saw them as symbols or as metaphors for greater philosophical ideas.
Campbell had previously discussed this idea with Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth:
CAMPBELL: That would be a mistake in the reading of the symbol. The myth puts you there all the time, gives you a line to connect with that mystery which you are (Campbell, 1988:57).Campbell's original voice
Campbell relied on the texts of Carl Jung as an explanation of psychological phenomena, as experienced through archetypes. But Campbell didn’t agree with Jung on every issue, and certainly had a very original voice of his own.
Joseph Campbell believed all the religions of the world, all the rituals and deities, to be “masks” of the same transcendent truth which is “unknowable.” He claims Christianity and Buddhism, whether the object is 'buddha-consciousness' or 'Christ-consciousness,' to be an elevated awareness above “pairs of opposites,” such as right and wrong.
In his four-volume series of books "The Masks of God", Campbell tried to summarize the main spiritual threads of the world, in support of his ideas on the "unity of the race of man"; In 1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces introduced his idea of the monomyth (borrowed from Joyce as stated above), which outlined the archetypal patterns Campbell recognized. Heroes were important to Campbell because, to him, they conveyed universal truths about how one should live one's life and about an individual's role in society.
Influence
Scholars who influenced Campbell
Campbell often referred to the work of modern writers James Joyce and Thomas Mann in his lectures and writings.
Campbell's ideas regarding myth and its relationship to the human psyche are dependent on the work of Carl Jung, whose studies of human psychology, as previously mentioned, greatly influenced Campbell. Campbell's conception of myth, is closely related to the Jungian method of dream interpretation, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation. Campbell in his 1981 text, The Mythic Image, quotes Jung on the Bardo Thodol who states that it "belongs to that class of writings which not only are of interest to specialists in Mahayana Buddhism, but also, because of their deep humanity and still deeper insight into the secrets of the human psyche, make an especial appeal to the layman seeking to broaden his knowledge of life"... "For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights" (Campbell 1981:392).
Campbell's "Follow your bliss" philosophy was influenced by the Sinclair Lewis 1922 novel, Babbitt. In The Power of Myth Campbell quotes from the novel:
Campbell: "Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis' 'Babbit'? Moyers: "Not in a long time." Campbell: "Remember the last line? 'I have never done the thing that I wanted to do in all my life.' That is a man who never followed his bliss" (Campbell, 1988:117).Campbell studied under mythology Professor Heinrich Zimmer while a young student at Columbia. Zimmer taught Campbell that myth (instead of a guru or person) could serve as a mentor, in that the stories provide a psychological roadmap for the finding of oneself in the labyrinth of the complex modern world. Campbell later borrowed from the interpretative techniques of Jung and reshaped them in a fashion that followed Zimmer's beliefs- interpreting directly from world mythology. This is an important distinction because it helps explain why Campbell did not directly follow Jung's footsteps in applied psychology.
Campbell's influences on others
George Lucas
George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to openly credit Campbell's influence. He stated during the release of the first Star Wars films during the late 1970s that they were based upon ideas found in The Hero With a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell. During these interviews with Bill Moyers, Campbell discusses the way in which Lucas used The Hero's Journey in the Star Wars films (IV, V, and VI) to re-invent the mythology for contemporary times. Bill Moyers, to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas' films . In addition, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped the Star Wars films .
Lucas also granted an extensive interview to the official biography of Joseph Campbell, Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind by Stephen and Robin Larsen.
Chris Vogler
Other members of the film industry were also inspired by Campbell. Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, created a now-legendary 7-page company memo, A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces, , based on Campbell's work which led to the development of Disney's 1993 film, The Lion King.
Tim Miller
- American writer Tim Miller has cited Campbell's work as an essential early influence on his own poetry, which generally centers around mythology and religion. He admits now that what is useful and most valuable in Campbell's work aren't his theories of how or why myths came to be, but rather his retellings of the myths themselves, and his passion for the importance of myth and religion in modern society. Miller credits Campbell with, at the very least, pointing his way to a direct experience of the sacred texts and stories, as well as inroducing him to the work of other scholars, Mircea Eliade among them. Miller's long poem-in-progress To the House of the Sun is in many ways directly related to Campbell's early influence on his writing.
Controversy
A few years after his death, some accused Campbell of anti-Semitism beginning with Brendan Gill's article, "The Faces of Joseph Campbell," published in the New York Review of Books, Vol. Gill, who identified himself as a friend of Campbell from the Century Club in New York City, notes in the article that he wrote it in reaction to the enormous popularity of The Power of Myth series in 1988. Professor of religion Robert Segal followed Gill's contention of anti-semitism with the article, "Joseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism" ( Religion Volume 22, Issue 2, April 1992: 151-170). Later in the article Segal also suggests that this view of Campbell stems, at least in part, from his tendency to critique aspects of different religions, which Campbell, in his valedictory series of lectures, Transformations of Myth Through Time had stated was his job. Defenders of Joseph Campbell" (cover of New York Review), "Joseph Campbell: An Exchange" (title of letter collection).
Stephen Larsen and Robin Larsen, the authors of the biography "Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind," (2002) also argued against what they referred to as "the so called anti-Semitic charge" (x). They state that: "For the record, Campbell did not belong to any organization that condoned racial or social bias, nor do we know of any other way in which he endorsed such viewpoints.
Note
^ Transcribed in book of same name [ISBN 0060964634]Bibliography of works by Campbell
Books by Joseph Campbell
When the two came to meet their father; Navaho War Ceremonial (Jeff King, Joseph Campbell, Maud Oakes) (1943) A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson) (1944) The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) The Flight of the Wild Gander:Explorations in the Mythological Dimension (1951) The Masks of God; Volume 4, Creative Mythology (1968) Myths to Live By (1972) The Mythic Image (1974) The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor As Myth and As Religion (1986) Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume I: The Way of Animal Powers; Part 3 (1989) Transformations of Myth Through Time (1990) A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Edited by Diane K. Satori: Asian Journals - Japan (Edited by David Kudler) (2002) Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal (Edited by David Kudler) (2003) Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation (Edited by David Kudler) (2004)Books based upon interviews with Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers and Betty Sue Flowers, ed.), (1988) An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms (1989) This business of the gods: Interview with Fraser Boa (1989) The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. Edited and with an Introduction by Phil Cousineau. New York: Harper and Row, (1990)Audio Tapes of Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth (With Bill Moyers) (1987) Transformation of Myth through Time Volume 1-3 (1989) The Hero with a Thousand Faces: The Cosmogonic Cycle (Read by Ralph Blum) (1990) The Way of Art (1990) The Lost Teachings of Joseph Campbell Volume 1-9 (With Michael Toms) (1993) On the Wings of Art: Joseph Campbell; Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce (1995) The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell (With Michael Toms) (1997) Joseph Campbell Audio Collection; Volume 1:Mythology and the Individual (1997) Joseph Campbell Audio Collection; Volume 2:The Inward Journey (1997) Joseph Campbell Audio Collection; Volume 3:The Eastern Way (1997) Joseph Campbell Audio Collection; Volume 4:Man and Myth (1997) Joseph Campbell Audio Collection; Volume 5:The Western Quest (1997) Joseph Campbell Audio Collection; Volume 6:The Myths and Masks of God (1997) Myth and Metaphor in Society (With Jamake Highwater)(abridged)(2002)Video/DVDs of Joseph Campbell
Transformations of Myth Through Time (1989) Mythos (1987/1998) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (1988) The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell (1987) (Phil Cousineau) Myth and Metaphor in Society (With Jamake Highwater) (1993) Sukhavati (2005)Books edited by Joseph Campbell
Gupta, Mahendranath. Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, translation assistants - see preface; Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2002.Books and articles critical of Campbell
Brendan Gill:
Brendan Gill, "The faces of Joseph Campbell" from New York Review of Books, Vol. Defenders of Joseph Campbell-Joseph Campbell: An Exchange."
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