Joseph Campbell is perhaps the best-known twentieth-century figure in the study of mythology and folklore. According to Campbell, comparative mythology illustrates the reality that all human beings are involved in a common struggle, the universal challenge of the life-journey, which Campbell might term the “heroic adventure” of each of our lives. Campbell attempted to illustrate how the great stories of all cultures reflect what he called the “journey of the hero,” in which the protagonist undergoes a number of challenges and tests to grow and to change: in short, the hero is reborn through the crucible of the journey into a new and better form. Campbell suggested that this basic structure of myth is common across time and around the globe because it represents a basic human understanding of our common quest for growth, maturity, wisdom, and meaning.
Joseph Campbell wrote a number of seminal texts in the academic study of mythology and folklore, including Fairy Tales: Folkloristic Commentary (1944), The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), and Masks of God (4 volumes, 1959–1967). Campbell believed that the myths and hero tales of different cultures contain universal themes that transcend the boundaries of time and place. (AP Photo)
Born in 1904, Campbell credited an early interest in mythology, in part, to his childhood fascination with the Wild West Shows of Buffalo Bill Cody and his youthful interest in Native American artifacts. Campbell was educated at the Canterbury School in Connecticut, Dartmouth College, and Columbia University, and sojourns in Europe helped to foster his growing belief in the utility of comparative scholarly views of mythology. From 1934 until his retirement in 1972, Campbell taught at Sarah Lawrence College. Campbell died in 1987, before he had completed the several volumes of his Historical Atlas of World Mythology (1983–).
Campbell developed his theories by drawing upon various psychological concepts, most notably those of Carl Jung, who used the term archetype to refer to universal concepts within what he called the “collective unconscious” of humanity. Campbell’s best-known idea, which appropriated Jung’s sense of the archetype, is commonly referred to as the monomyth of the hero, a term Campbell appropriated from James Joyce. The monomyth is composed of a pattern of recurring mythic archetypes regarding the most important episodes in the heroic struggle; these storylines may be seen again and again in various heroic narratives from all over the world and across the millennia. Simply put, the details of the stories differ from place to place and from time to time, but the basic plot is the same: as Campbell might have put it, the mask of the hero varies from culture to culture and story to story, but hidden beneath that mask we find a reflection of ourselves in key aspects of the universal human experience.
In general, the monomyth consists of three parts: a separation or departure, an adventure—also called initiation—which includes trials and victories, and a return. The hero usually leaves the workaday world for a supernatural realm wherein he encounters magical creatures and powers with which he comes into conflict; having successfully overcome these powers and succeeded on some quest, the hero returns to his everyday existence enriched by his adventure. The hero often has a miraculous conception and birth, regularly displays remarkable childhood deeds, usually has battles with monsters, and generally undergoes a journey to the underworld. The heroic adventure of monomyth works on a number of levels: for example, while the hero returns with new powers, treasures, or knowledge, which enrich his people, the hero’s journey also represents the quest for meaning and wisdom common to every individual.
Not all of the archetypes described by Campbell appear in every myth, but according to the theory of the monomyth, the general narrative structure should usually include many of them. According to Campbell, the monomyth is explicitly linked to rites of passage, and thus often includes a mentor-figure or shaman-guide, often a god or goddess in disguise. According to Campbell, each of the three main sections of the monomyth includes a number of steps: the departure is made up of the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, supernatural aid, the crossing of the first threshold, and the belly of the whale; the initiation is comprised of the road of trials, the meeting with the goddess, the woman as temptress, atonement with the father, apotheosis, and the ultimate boon; the return includes the refusal of the return, the magic flight, the rescue from without, the crossing of the return threshold, the master of the two worlds, and the freedom to live.
Campbell was the author of a number of books, although his work is best known to popular audiences through the book that outlined his vision of the monomyth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which gained further immense exposure after the production of the PBS series The Power of Myth (1988), which appeared the year after Campbell’s death, and which featured conversations between Campbell and commentator Bill Moyers. A book of the same title was published the same year. Among other books and articles, Campbell’s most notable publications include The Masks of God (1959–1968), Myths, Dreams, and Religion (1970), Myths to Live By (1972), and The Mythic Image (1974). Campbell was well versed in a number of fields, but his greatest gift seems to have been that of storytelling: he was able to bring to life ancient texts and arcane theories that set the popular imagination afire.
The Monomyth of the Hero
The monomyth of the hero is a concept developed by Joseph Campbell, which suggests that all heroic myths from all times and all cultures fundamentally tell the same story, that of the hero who journeys to another world to overcome obstacles and defeat monsters in order to return with gifts with which to empower his people. The details differ from tradition to tradition, and thus the “masks” of the hero change, but at its core all peoples retell the same story. Based on the work of Carl Jung, this monomyth suggests that all heroic tales fundamentally tell us the story of ourselves as we wrestle with our demons and negotiate various rites of passage in an effort to become fully developed human beings.
C. Fee
The enthusiastic popular reception of Campbell’s work, however, has been counterbalanced to a certain extent in recent decades by sometimes severe criticism on the part of the scholarly community. The most common critiques leveled at Campbell’s work often seem to stem from the very real concern that notable differences between narratives and cultures often might be glossed over in an overriding desire to identify common archetypes. Some would argue that what is thus ignored includes the most interesting cultural aspects of a given myth, those that have the most to teach us about the culture that produced that myth. Feminist readings find the hero’s journey to be very much a male-oriented endeavor, with marginalized female figures and/or troubling gender roles. Finally, Campbell’s emphasis on a universal approach to myth does not take into account his own ingrained biases and perspectives. Campbell was a product of his times: in the decades since Campbell’s death, scholars have been much more careful about acknowledging and controlling for such predispositions.
In any case, Campbell’s work, although now often heavily criticized by scholars of mythology, has been undeniably widely popular and influential in contemporary American culture. Indeed, popular movies and television series often explicitly and self-consciously draw upon the models of the monomyth and its various archetypes. The immensely successful Star Wars series provides what is probably the most often cited case in point. Thus having redefined and popularized the study of mythology in the popular American consciousness, Joseph Campbell developed into a mythic figure in his own right.
C. Fee
See also Folklore and Folktales; Myths
Further Reading
Axelrod, Alan, Harry Oster, and Walton H. Rawls. 2000. The Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore. New York: Penguin Reference.
Golden, Kenneth L. 1992. Uses of Comparative Mythology: Essays on the Work of Joseph Campbell. New York: Garland.
Leeming, David Adams. 2005. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leeming, David Adams, and Marion Sader. 1997. Storytelling Encyclopedia: Historical, Cultural, and Multiethnic Approaches to Oral Traditions Around the World. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.
Noel, Daniel C. 1990. Paths to the Power of Myth: Joseph Campbell and the Study of Religion. New York: Crossroad.
Segal, Robert Alan. 1990. Joseph Campbell: An Introduction. New York: Penguin Books.
Thury, Eva M., and Margaret Klopfle Devinney. 2009. Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths. Oxford: Oxford University Press.