From the work that brought him to national prominence to the key lectures he kept in his own study, this volume is an important piece of The Joseph Campbell Audio Collection and presents listeners with his timeless wisdom, provocative insights, and terrific stories.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-1987) was a prolific writer, dedicated editor, beloved teacher, inspiring lecturer, gifted storyteller, avid scholar, and a foremost interpreter of myth. Among the many books he wrote and edited, he is best known for The Hero with a Thousand Faces, his four-volume The Masks of God, and his magnum opus, Historical Atlas of World Mythology.
From AudioFile
These live lectures of Joseph Campbell offer the rare chance to hear a master teacher explain his ideas. Campbell explores the themes of love and man's relationship to God and his community, tracing a lineage from pre-Christian mythology through the Arthurian legends. As he identifies related motifs in the traditions of five continents, Campbell teaches listeners how to think about spirituality and history. He also communicates his love for his topic, breaking in on himself with suddenly remembered examples or jokes. However, the production quality of these tapes is distracting. The original recording contains many pops and squeaks, as well as jangling New Age music that interrupts Campbell in mid-thought. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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More About the Author
Joseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles. Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.
After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.
Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.
After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.
Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful,
By whimsical nomad (Colorado - United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Western Quest (Joseph Campbell Audio Collection) (Audio Cassette)
Listening to these tapes has rekindled my passion for writing and storytelling. In these tapes Joseph Campbell tells the detailed story of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. He includes fascinating details and versions of the stories that I never knew existed. He also shows how the history of England impacted the different versions of the King Arthur legend. For me, the stories and information on these tapes is more delicious than ice cream and cake.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Holy Grail of the Grail Legend Explanations,
By Villemar (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Western Quest (Joseph Campbell Audio Collection) (Audio Cassette)
With the unbelievable success of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code, the good old Holy Grail has been catapulted into the minds and imaginations of readers worldwide. That book, an easily accessible novelization of the theories put forth in Baigent & Leigh's 1981 book Holy Blood Holy Grail, has spread wide that book's contention that the Grail is actually a sacred bloodline guarded by a secret society that has existed through the ages since Medieval times, the "Priory of Sion." That theory has been subsequently debunked as an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a strange Frenchman. Still, the theory has been given new life due to Brown, and has perked the antennae of millions who may now look at vast stretches of European history with a curious and conspiratorial eye.But what was the Holy Grail all about, anyways? Joseph Campbell, with loving affection, breaks down the symbology of the Grail Legends and places them masterfully in context in this series of delightful audio lectures. He focuses on the penultimate version of the Grail Legend, Wolfram Von Esenbach's Parzifal. Not obsessing over the actual meaning of the Grail itself (after all it is only a symbol, and Joseph Cambell fans know well that taking a mythic symbol as a historical fact is the worst possible interpretation of a mythic symbol); rather he focuses on the fascinating milieu of the time that generated these works, the period from 1150 to 1250 AD. Campbell has such fun delivering these lectures (specifically Volumes 3-5), that his enthusiasm and delight cannot help but infect the listener, and you will most assuredly be rapt as he tells Parzifal's story. If you get the cassette version of this series, be sure to digitize it to a CD or something because I guarantee you'll be listening to these lectures over and over again, wearing out your tapes! To summarize, anyone truly interested in the Grail Legends would do themselves a great service by listening to these lectures. Also, Joseph Cambell fans will get to see a wonderful side of the man himself, as he derives such obvious joy telling this story, a side often touched on when seen on TV or heard in his many lectures, but presented in such a full-throttle mode here it will guarantee to put a smile on your face and add to your appreciation of this brilliant and gifted genius.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Campbell,
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This review is from: Western Quest (Joseph Campbell Audio Collection) (Audio Cassette)
Once a person has listened through a number of Campbell's lectures, the television series of interviews with Bill Moyers (which largely served to bring Campbell to a large posthumous audience) seem almost silly in comparison. I have the Moyers interviews on DVD and have watched them many times, and the more I watch it the more obvious it becomes that Moyers understood very little of what Campbell was about. It is by far better to hear Campbell lecture, setting his own agenda, rather than answering the questions of others. I've written many blog posts on Joseph Campbell, as I always find his lectures inspiring. For example:[...] These lectures feature Campbell specifically focusing on the Western contribution to mythology. This is fortunate, as Campbell frequently draws his examples from India, which he studied extensively and to which he traveled. Western mythology tends to get neglected. Throughout his other lectures Campbell will occasionally mention the Western traditions of courtly love and grail quest and the like, but this course of lectures gives him the time to focus on these subjects in a way that he does not do elsewhere. If you listen to a number of Campbell's lectures you'll hear that he repeats favorite stories and examples, sometimes repeating an item in the same series of lectures. But Campbell's lectures are so insightful and informative that I would gladly listen to a story twice. This is some of the best intellectual stimulation that I've come across, and entertaining to boot.
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