Product Description

A study of heroism in the myths of the world - an exploration of all the elements common to the great stories that have helped people make sense of their lives from the earliest times. It takes in Greek Apollo, Maori and Jewish rites, the Buddha, Wotan, and the bothers Grimm's Frog-King.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1105 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

Difficult concept, yet universal
Campbell was one of the most distinguished figures in the continuing study of mythology, a sadly neglected subject in recent times. Legend and myth aren't identical. Legend (or saga) at least hints at some historical truth (e.g. the Trojan War). Myth, often associated with legend, is far more complex. The human mind can't think at first in terms of abstracts, such as truth. We need a mental picture of someone or something that is true, especially in dreams. What does truth itself look like? We need a symbol. All societies known have a mythology, usually treating it with more respect than our own - to our cost. A person may be the symbol of e.g. courage. We see a courageous person in dreams, not courage itself. And any given society has its own type (archetype) of the courageous character etc. Hence the title: Hero With A Thousand Faces, a face for each society, but the same concept (heroism, courage), that and many more.
A remarkable piece of work, although, for my money, I prefer Kerenyi, the overall treatment and the individual volumes on specific, particularly significant, concepts, such as motherhood and prolonged life, or death. Much to be recommended, both Campbell and Kerenyi.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the work that first introduced me to Joseph Campbell. It was then and continues to be one of my favorite books of all time. Each time I read this valuable resource, I uncover another layer of usefulness. This time, I was specifically looking at how the cycle of the Hero's Journey directly related to the cycle of healing.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces presents Campbell's Hero's Journey. By looking at mythology worldwide, he noticed some very significant similarities in the journeys taken by the hero or heroine of these stories, hence the cycle. In this work, Campbell presents a number of snippets from different myths showing that indeed such a pattern exists. Indeed, it is a template still used by the best pieces of fiction and some of the most memorable movies.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a must have for anyone the least bit interested in mythology as well as every psychologist, writer, and healer on the planet. This is one of those books that quickly becomes dog-eared with consistent reuse.

If your job is to create narratives then this is vital
It's early days for me with this book, and I'm going to have to read it several times to wring every drop of usefulness from it. But it seems to me that this is possibly one of the most important books ever written about the art of story telling. It's tied into unfashionable Freudian and Jungian analysis (the book was published in 1948), and it's best read if you already know the outline of the monomyth/heroic myth and why it's useful to writers (Google it---there are many sites offering on outline). It's also, essentially, an academic work, although I had no problems reading it, and it's definitely not an academic text of the "rigorous" type (ie an overload of citations and dry explanations). Campbell is a compelling writer, and the text reads well.

If you create narratives for a living, whether as a script writer or novelist, then this book should be considered essential reading. Unless you're supremely and destructively arrogant, I really can't see how your work won't be enhanced in some way by the analysis contained within. Not only will it help you structure your work but it will also help you connect with your readers or audience, because you will understand what it is that they want out of stories. It's interesting to see how many movies and novels that I've seen and read that explicitly contravene the advice in this book, and fail as a result. It really is that clear-cut.