Customer Reviews

Western Quest (Joseph Campbell Audio Collection)

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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.

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.

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:

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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.

Too bad the casettes had tape hiss and poor quality audio.

Not sure if this was in the source.

But the videotapes i saw of these lectures did not have this problem.

They don't have to go bananas with noise reduction but a little clean up through a digital software that are dime a dozen nowadays would have fixed the problem or at least dampened it down a bit.

Like if the original sound reels were processed by Noise Reduction through a dolby workstation.

Which i know Highbridge has used to remaster stuff before, just not this time.

Not sure if these problems are on the CD version as well as the CD version is out of print and no longer available except at absurd prices.