Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 31, 1987) was an American professor, writer, and orator best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.

Life

Childhood

Joseph Campbell was born to Charles and Josephine Campbell in an upper middle class IrishRoman Catholic family in White Plains,New York. When he was seven years old, a turning point in his life occurred. His father took he and his brother Charlie to see Buffalo Bill/Buffalo Bill's Wild West ShowNative American culture when He became obsessed with the naked Native American who put his ear to the ground and listened with some special knowledge. He visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York and absorbed everything he could about Native American society, focusing on mythology. By the time he was ten, he had read everything about Native Americans in the children's section of the library, that led them to allow him into the adult section to continue his studies. Thus began Campbell's lifelong passion with myth and to his mapping and study of its seemingly cohesive threads among disparate human cultures.

At thirteen, he spent the year recovering from a major respiratory illness. Afterward, he went to Canterbury, a Catholic residential school in New Milford, CT/Connecticut. Campbell's high school years went very well except for a major tragedy. In 1919, their home was destroyed by fire, his grandmother died in that fire, and the family lost all their possessions.

Education

Campbell graduated in 1921, and went to Dartmouth college where he studied biology and mathematics. The academics were lackluster, and he wanted to study the humanities instead so he transfered to Columbia University where he shone. He played in a jazz band and became a star runner. In 1924, on a journey to Europe with his family, Campbell met and became friends with Jiddu Krishnamurti, the founder of the Theosophical Society. a friendship which began his lifelong interest in Hindu philosophy and mythology.He received a B.A. in English literature in 1925 and M.A. in Arthurian Studies in 1927.

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. He quickly learned to read and speak both French and German mastering them only after a few months of rigorous study. He remained fluent in both languages for the rest of his life.

He was highly influenced in Europe by the period of the Lost Generation, a time of enormous intellectual and artistic innovation. 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. You know that wonderful living in a realm of significant fantasy, which is Irish, is there in the Arthurian romances; it's in Joyce; and it's in my life.

COUSINEAU: Did you find that you identified with Stephen Daedalus...in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

CAMPBELL: His problem was my problem, exactly...Joyce helped release me into an understanding of the universal sense of these symbols . . . Joyce disengaged himself and left the labyrinth, you might say, of Irish politics and the church to go to Paris, where he became one of the very important members of this marvelous movement that Paris represented in the period when I was there, in the '20s.

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. He became particularly enthusiastic about the work of Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso. A whole new world opened up to Campbell while studying in Europe. Here he discovered the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. 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, the Great Depression and Finding His Voice

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.

A few weeks later, the Great Depression began, with no hope of getting a teaching position. Campbell would spend the next five years (1929-1934) trying to figure out what to do with his life. He spent two years re-connecting with friends and family and then decided to "hit the road" as so many young men do, and try to find his destiny. During this period he engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. 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. And this went on for five years straight." The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (1990, first edition:52-3.

He traveled all over California, and became close friends with the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. During this time, he eliminated Anthropology from his career choices and realized that the passion he had felt in examining the Native American Indians could be incorporated into a career in literature.

In 1932, after learning Russian in order to read War and Peace in it's original language, he decided to leave California. Campbell applied to seventy colleges in the attempt to find work. Finally, he accepted a post at the Canterbury School as headmaster for one year back on the east coast. This was a difficult year for him made brighter by selling his first short story, Strictly Platonic. In 1933, he lived in a cottage without running water in Woodstock, N.Y. reading and writing mostly Science Fiction all year.

In 1934, Campbell was offered a position as a professor at Sarah Lawrence College (through the efforts of his former Columbia advisor W.W. Laurence). In 1938 Campbell married his second wife, one of his former students, Jean Erdman. Jean was an emerging dancer with Martha Graham's new troupe and eventually became a choreographer in her own company. Campbell stayed at Sarah Lawrence thirty eight years, until he retired in 1972.

In 1940, he was introduced to Swami Nikhilananda, and was asked to help with a new translation of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. This was published in 1942. Subsequently, Nikhilananda introduced Campbell to the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer, through whom he became involved with the Bollingen Foundation, founded by Paul and Mary Mellon. They were just beginning an ambitious publishing project, the Bollingen Series. This was to become a major venue for Campbell's publishing over the years.

When Zimmer unexpectedly died with much left to edit, Campbell was asked by Zimmer's widow and Mary Mellon to edit these for publication. Campbell completed four volumes from Zimmer’s posthumous papers, and prepared the way for his later works.

Campbell was at his best in The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. He died in 1987, in Honolulu, shortly after filming it. A fitting way for the "Hero" to exit.

Work

Author

After his brief work in short stories, and his voluminous editing of Zimmer's un published notes, Campbell began publishing his own work. In 1944,he published in the more conventional, more strictly English literature analysis genre with Grimm’s Fairy Tales and A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake which he co-authored with Henry Morton Robinson. The Skeleton Key was the first major study of James Joyce’s notoriously complex novel.

His first venture into the mythological exploration that would become his life's work was om 1949,The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It was an instant success, winning him many honors and awards. One of these was the National Institute for Arts and Letters Award for Contributions in Creative Literature. In this work, Campbell introduces his concept of the Monomyth, the archetypical pattern of the hero that is held in common throughout the world in all cultures. This term is borrowed from James Joyce, but is developed in detail uniquely by Campbell. In The Hero book, the monomyth relates primarily to the individual and the psychological aspects of heroism. When Campbell developed this idea later, however, the monomyth also applies to the wider society and culture as well and he utilizes techniques and observations characteristic of anthropology. The Hero With a Thousand Faceshas stimulated much creative thought, discussion and expression and has been acclaimed a classic.

Campbell continued to author dozens of other books, generally relating to similar themes. These included the four volume series, The Masks of God. They were The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (Vol. 1: 1959), Oriental Mythology (Vol. 2: 1962), Occidental Mythology (Vol. 3: 1964), and Creative Mythology (Vol. 4: 1968). He also authored The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension (1969); Myths to Live By (1972); The Mythic Image (1974); The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (1986).

Campbell also left unfinished his multi-partHistorical Atlas of World Mythology (1983-87). At the time of Campbell’s death he was producing this as a large-format, beautifully illustrated series. It 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). Only the first two parts were completed by Campbell.

Many of his thoughts and ideas have been compiled post-humorously. A recent compilation of many of his ideas is titled Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor.

He was also a prolific editor. Some of the books he edited were The Portable Arabian Nights (1952) and was general editor of the series Man and Myth (1953-1954), which included major works by Maya Deren (Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti, 1953), Carl Kerenyi (The Gods of the Greeks, 1954), and Alan Watts (Myth and Ritual in Christianity, 1954). He also edited The Portable Jung (1972), as well as six volumes of Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks (Bollingen Series XXX): Spirit and Nature (1954), The Mysteries (1955), Man and Time (1957), Spiritual Disciplines (1960), Man and Transformation (1964), and The Mystic Vision (1969)

Speaker

Although Joseph Campbell's books are treasured by many, and have been quite influential, perhaps his greatest talent has been in his public speaking. His ability to re-tell the myth is powerfully engaging as exemplified in the PBS television series done with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth. This was first broadcast in 1988, the year after Campbell's death. The series presented his ideas on archetypes to millions and remains a staple on PBS. A companion book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly afterward. The video and book remain popular.

Scholars who influenced Campbell

Campbell often referred to the work of modern writers James Joyce and Thomas Mann in his lectures and writings. He also stated that his three favorite philosophers were Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Immanuel Kant ^{[citation needed]}. Anthropologist Leo Frobenius was important to Campbell’s view of cultural history. He often indicated that the single most important book in his intellectual development was Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West.

Campbell's ideas regarding myth and its relationship to the human psyche are heavily dependent on the work of Carl Jung, whose studies of human psychology, as previously mentioned, heavily influenced Campbell. The Jungian method of dream interpretation, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation, is closely related to Campbell's conception of myth.

Jung's insights into archetypes were in turn heavily influenced by the Bardo Thodol (also referred to as the The Tibetan Book of the Dead). 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 also referenced the Sanskrit concept of "Sat Chit Ananda." Sat (Being) Chit (Full Consciousness) Ananda (Rapture). He said, "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." (The Power of Myth) ^{[citation needed]}

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. Zimmer relied more on the meaning (symbols, metaphor, imagery, etc.) of mythological fairytales for psychological realizations than on psychoanalysis. Campbell later borrowed from the interpretative techniques of Jung but then reshaped them in a fashion that followed Zimmer's beliefs- interpreting directly from world mythology instead of through the lens of psychoanalysis.

Campbell's Unique Voice

Campbell's unique and original vision drew from ideas expressed by Carl Jung as an explanation of psychological phenomena as experienced through archetypes.

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. Indeed, he states in the preface of The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names." which is a translation of the Rig Vedic saying "Ekam Sat Vipra Bahuda Vadanthi." Campbell was fascinated by what he viewed as universal sentiments and truths, disseminated through cultures which all featured different manifestations. In the preface of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he also indicates that his goal was to demonstrate the similarities between Eastern and Western religions.

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"; tied in with this was the idea that most of the belief systems of the world had a common geographic ancestry, starting off on the fertile grasslands of Europe in the Bronze Age and moving to the Levant and the "Fertile Crescent" of Mesopotamia and back to Europe (and the Far East), where it was mixed with the newly emerging Indo-European (Aryan) culture.

In Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor Campbell states: "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.

He believed all spirituality is searching for the same unknown force (which he spoke of as both an immanent and a transcendent force, or that which is both within and without, as opposed to only without) from which everything came, in which everything currently exists, and into which everything will return. He referred to this force as the connotation of what he called "metaphors", the metaphors being the various deities and objects of spirituality in the world.

Campbell's Influence on Others

Legacy

The twentieth century has been in extraordinarily great need for renewed meaning and Joseph Campbell has offered a renewal of myth, a center of ancient meaning. Myth is central to the religious genesis that has historically provided meaning and stability for culture and Campbell's work has helped modern man reconcile the present with the meaning from the past. Myth is also close to dreams and the unconscious, and modern man feels a need for closer contact that the re-telling of myth can provide.

The sheer volume of his work and detail were a deterrent to all except those specifically interested in his field until the televised showing of "The Power of Myth." Campbell had previously been somewhat of a cult figure for a few when his popularity exploded after the television showing. The format of video made him much more accessible to a larger group of people. It also helped that his scholarly works had been existant for a long time, and had already been discussed and gone over in the academic world and were generally accepted. The timing was right when that series aired.

In Popular Culture

George Lucas' film series "Star Wars" was extremely popular and Lucas was the first Hollywood director to acknowledge the affect of Campbell's ideas on the development of his films. Lucas said in an extensive interview in the official biography of Joseph Campbell, Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind by Stephen and Robin Larsen that:

I came to the conclusion after 'American 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...The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy 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, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books...It was very eerie because in reading 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' I began to realize that my first draft of 'Star Wars' was following classic motifs...so I modified my next draft [of 'Star Wars'] according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent...I went on to read 'The Masks of God' and many other books (Larsen and Larsen, 2002: 541).

The 1988 documentary The Power of Myth, was filmed at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, and during the interviews with Bill Moyers, Campbell discussed the way in which Lucas used The Hero's Journey in the Star Wars films (IV, V, and VI) to re-invent mythology for contemporary times. Moyers and Lucas filmed an interview 12 years later in 1999 called the Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas & Bill Moyers, to further discuss the impact of Campbell's work on Lucas' films [1].

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 [2]. A companion guide of the same name was published in 1997.

Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, created a now-legendary 7-page company memo, A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces, [3], based on Campbell's work which led to the development of Disney's 1993 film, The Lion King. Vogler's memo was later developed into the late 1990's book, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers , which would become the basis for a number of successful Hollywood films.

Academically

Joseph Campbell came to represent a way to understand the underlying unity of humanity and present some substantial evidence for this belief. His success is academically supported by the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, who made anecdotal evidence and verbal report an acceptable source of knowledge. Levi-Strauss would not use content the way Campbell did, preferring the structure as a basis for analysis, but still his work allowed the work of Campbell to be seen more favorably. Whether Campbell actually proves this underlying unity remains to be seen. His literary and anecdotal analysis is logical, but lengthy and seems to go into such minute detail as to distract from the main point he is trying to make. He is, however, much more accessible than the scientifically oriented Claude Levi-Strauss who may prove some of his points better, but whom few can understand.

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 says 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 re-tellings 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 sacred texts and stories, as well as introducing 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.

Critique

Campbell defends his view exhaustively, some say at the expense of literary quality. The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut satirized Campbell's views as being excessively baroque by offering his interpretation of the monomyth, called the "In The Hole" theory; loosely defined as "The hero gets into trouble. The hero gets out of trouble."

A few years after his death, some accused Campbell of anti-Semitism. Stephen Larsen and Robin Larsen, the authors of the biography "Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind," (2002) argued against what they referred to as "the so called anti-Semitic charge". 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. During his lifetime there was no record of such accusations in which he might have publicly betrayed his bigotry or visibly been forced to defend such a position".

Joseph Campbell remains beloved by many and has stimulated much creativity. It is unfortunate that the modern academic culture has historically been so adversarial that he felt forced to choose such a lengthy modus operandi. As literate as he was, one wishes for more of his own myth making and to emerge that we could not only define the unity of humanity but dance together within it.

Quotes

"Mythology is often defined as 'other peoples' religions', religion can be thought of as misinterpreted mythology." He asked people to step back and examine their own religious traditions as mythology, and in doing so, people with doubts as to the literal interpretations of religious texts could get more meaning from the mythological symbolism instead ^{[citation needed]}

“This is an essential experience of any mystical realization. You die to your flesh and are born to your spirit. You identify yourself with the consciousness and life of which your body is but the vehicle. You die to the vehicle and become identified in your consciousness with that of which the vehicle is the carrier. And that is the God.” - Tape 4, Power of Myth.

"The one radiance shines through all things." - Tape 4, Power of Myth.

"Art is the clothing of a revelation" - Transformations of Myth Through Time ^{[citation needed]}

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life” - this was not an endorsement of masochism, but rather a recognition that life contains hardship and an individual should embrace the experience of being alive by living affirmatively in the face of inevitable sorrow and suffering. This was an echo of a Buddhist teaching that calls for "joyful participation in the sorrows of the world." ^{[citation needed]}

"I don’t have to have faith, I have had experience" - Tape 6, Power of Myth

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do 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. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. ^{[citation needed]}

"Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts — but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message." ^{[citation needed]}

"We are fishing for minnows while we are standing on a whale."

Selected Bibliography

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 1, Primitive Mythology (1959)
The Masks of God; Volume 2, Oriental Mythology (1962)
The Masks of God; Volume 3, Occidental Mythology (1964)
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 1 (1988)
Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume I: The Way of Animal Powers; Part 2 (1988)
Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume II: The Way of the Seeded Earth; Part 1 (1988)
Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume II: The Way of the Seeded Earth; Part 2 (1989)
Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume II: The Way of the Seeded Earth; Part 3 (1989)
Transformations of Myth Through Time (1990)
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Edited by Diane K. Osbon) (1991)
Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce (Edited by Edmund L. Epstein) (1993)
The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays (1959-1987) (Edited by Anthony Van Couvering) (1993)
Baksheesh & Brahman: Indian Journals (1954-1955) (Edited by Robin/Stephen Larsen & Anthony Van Couvering) (1995)
Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor (Edited by Eugene Kennedy) (2001)
Sake & 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. Forward by Stuart L. Brown, Executive Editor. 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. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942) (translation from Bengali by Swami Nikhilananda; Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson, translation assistants - see preface; foreword by Aldous Huxley)
Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization; Heinrich Zimmer, (1946)
The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil; Heinrich Zimmer (1948)
Philosophies of India; Heinrich Zimmer (1951)
The Portable Arabian Nights (1951)
The Art of Indian Asia; Heinrich Zimmer (1955)
Man and Time: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks; Various authors (1954-1969)
Man and Transformation: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks; Various authors (1954-1969)
Mysteries, The: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks; Various authors (1954-1969)
Mystic Vision, The: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks; Various authors (1954-1969)
Spirit and Nature: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks; Various authors (1954-1969)
Spiritual Disciplines: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks; Various authors (1954-1969)
Myths, Dreams, Religion; Various authors (1970)
The Portable Jung; Carl Jung (1971)

Secondary Sources

General

Golden, Kenneth L. Uses of Comparative Mythology: Essays on the Work of Joseph Campbell. New York: Garland, 1992.
Harris, Stephen L. and Gloria Platzner. Classical Mythology: Images and Insights, third edition. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, Co., 2001.
Henderson, Mary. Star Wars: The Magic of Myth. Companion volume to the exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. New York: Bantam, 1997.
Jones, Steven Swann. The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of the Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Larsen, Stephen and Robin Larsen. Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2002.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1998.

Books and articles critical of Campbell

Brendan Gill:

Brendan Gill, "The faces of Joseph Campbell" from New York Review of Books, Vol. 36, Issue 14, September 28, 1989, pages 16-19.
"Brendan Gill vs. Defenders of Joseph Campbell-Joseph Campbell: An Exchange." from New York Review of Books, Vol. 36, Issue 17, November 9, 1989, pages 57-61.

General:

Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell
Ford, Clyde W. The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa. New York: Bantam, 2000.
Manganaro, Marc. Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority: A Critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, and Campbell. New Haven: Yale, 1992.
Daniel C. Noel, editor, Paths to the Power of Myth
Pearson, Carol and Katherine Pope. The Female Hero in American and British Literature. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1981.

Defenses of Campbell

Joseph Campbell & Antisemitism - The Politics of the Matter

External links

Biography
Joseph Campbell Foundation
The Joseph Campbell Library at Pacifica Graduate Institute
Center for Story & Symbol
How myth became the legend of Joseph Campbell - Sunday Herald newspaper
Myths-Dreams-Symbols - The Psychology of Dreams
Joseph Campbell at TV.com
Joseph Campbell Yahoogroup
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