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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
If he wanted me to read the endnotes, he would have made them footnotes.
The book is very rich in both terms of historical detail as well as examples and snippets from mythological texts from around the world. I read the book because I really liked an audio book of Joseph Campbell's, on Mythology, from several years ago. To me, the value of this book was in seeing how, all through time and all around the world, people have a sense of something bigger than just what we experience with our five senses, and they want with all their hearts to connect to it. I would say "reconnect" possibly because, in some beliefs, we've been here before, and this life is just one of many iterations.
My only complaint would be that a lot of the mythological text quotes in the book tend to be very symbolic and mystical in nature. So, the quote can read like bad 60's beat poetry. I often skimmed over the quotes for that reason.
My only complaint would be that a lot of the mythological text quotes in the book tend to be very symbolic and mystical in nature. So, the quote can read like bad 60's beat poetry. I often skimmed over the quotes for that reason.
slow-paced
nope nope nope. this is why sokal was able to do it ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
So when I was in high school, I got very into the idea of narrative structuralism. Blame a few too many late nights on TVTropes, but I became fascinated by the idea of utilizing these narrative building blocks to create, essentially, a perfect story. Perfection is, of course, not the goal, so much as the thing we strive towards - but still! I inundated myself in conversations of act structure and elemental tropes, and so naturally I was pushed towards Campbell. Despite not having read him, I held up Campbell and his Hero's Journey as sort of the gold standard of storytelling. I bought Hero with a Thousand Faces years ago, excited to finally read this thing that had influenced so many of my favourite writers and directors. I didn't get very far before becoming intimidated and giving up. Another time, I decided.
Now, with a full degree under my belt and a better understanding of theory and composition, I return to Campbell and... oh boy. Suddenly I understand why I was so dissuaded during my first read - Campbell starts with a positively exhausting conversation about Freudian and Jungian psychology. To my surprise, Campbell is far less interested in the mechanics of narrative as much as he is in pure narrative psychoanalysis, possibly the least interesting topic to me. He eventually moves beyond the psychoanalysis conversation, but it still inundates all his thought. He's not interested in narrative structuralism for the essence of telling good stories so much as for what it can tell us about the human psyche. Campbell's argument is that because of the universality of the monomyth, there is some sort of universal psychology to humanity, and that myth is most present in our dreaming life - that the hero's journey is ultimately one into the subconscious of the dreamer and back into the waking world.
Perhaps if this wasn't so indebted to pure Freudian psychology I would be more content with it, but instead, Campbell spends so much time talking about the monomyth through Freud's language of phallic jealousy and the Oedipal complexes and like... no! Y'all are just weird! This Freudian obsession drags Campbell's entire concept down, an integral part of the hero's journey is apparently learning to not sleep with your mom and to deal with how much you want to kill your dad. Not to mention the inherent misogyny borrowed from Freud's language - for Campbell, the hero is inevitably male, and the obstacles in his journey are inevitably female. It's just so damn tiring.
Once we move on from the Freudian psychoanalysis things improve, but it's still rough. Partly it's just Campbell has such a different - and personally, more boring - approach to storytelling than I do. I agree that myth is an essential part of life, but I think it's because of the human draw to storytelling, how we find more truth in art than in reality. Campbell seems to think myth is essential because it's a secret code to the human condition, like some shitty Dan Brown novel. His approach to storytelling is so dry and economic. The wide breadth of legends he is drawing from is very cool, but given how much he twists the stories I'm familiar with in order to forward his monomyth narrative, I can only imagine he's contorted the ones I'm less familiar with as well.
I don't think Campbell's ideas are inherently without merit - I still love the ideas of act structures and many of the tropes that he discusses. But, like Freud and Jung, I'm far more interested in the ways his students have developed his ideas into functional concepts rather than weird psychosexual obsessions. Oh, and that's without getting into how damn dense his language is. Campbell will often throw a bunch of terms into a blender and then retell a myth with zero extrapolation and expect to have made a point. There are several full chapters like this. Despite whatever impact Campbell has had on the world, I can't imagine developed study of this book is worth more than digging into whatever his successors have said.
Now, with a full degree under my belt and a better understanding of theory and composition, I return to Campbell and... oh boy. Suddenly I understand why I was so dissuaded during my first read - Campbell starts with a positively exhausting conversation about Freudian and Jungian psychology. To my surprise, Campbell is far less interested in the mechanics of narrative as much as he is in pure narrative psychoanalysis, possibly the least interesting topic to me. He eventually moves beyond the psychoanalysis conversation, but it still inundates all his thought. He's not interested in narrative structuralism for the essence of telling good stories so much as for what it can tell us about the human psyche. Campbell's argument is that because of the universality of the monomyth, there is some sort of universal psychology to humanity, and that myth is most present in our dreaming life - that the hero's journey is ultimately one into the subconscious of the dreamer and back into the waking world.
Perhaps if this wasn't so indebted to pure Freudian psychology I would be more content with it, but instead, Campbell spends so much time talking about the monomyth through Freud's language of phallic jealousy and the Oedipal complexes and like... no! Y'all are just weird! This Freudian obsession drags Campbell's entire concept down, an integral part of the hero's journey is apparently learning to not sleep with your mom and to deal with how much you want to kill your dad. Not to mention the inherent misogyny borrowed from Freud's language - for Campbell, the hero is inevitably male, and the obstacles in his journey are inevitably female. It's just so damn tiring.
Once we move on from the Freudian psychoanalysis things improve, but it's still rough. Partly it's just Campbell has such a different - and personally, more boring - approach to storytelling than I do. I agree that myth is an essential part of life, but I think it's because of the human draw to storytelling, how we find more truth in art than in reality. Campbell seems to think myth is essential because it's a secret code to the human condition, like some shitty Dan Brown novel. His approach to storytelling is so dry and economic. The wide breadth of legends he is drawing from is very cool, but given how much he twists the stories I'm familiar with in order to forward his monomyth narrative, I can only imagine he's contorted the ones I'm less familiar with as well.
I don't think Campbell's ideas are inherently without merit - I still love the ideas of act structures and many of the tropes that he discusses. But, like Freud and Jung, I'm far more interested in the ways his students have developed his ideas into functional concepts rather than weird psychosexual obsessions. Oh, and that's without getting into how damn dense his language is. Campbell will often throw a bunch of terms into a blender and then retell a myth with zero extrapolation and expect to have made a point. There are several full chapters like this. Despite whatever impact Campbell has had on the world, I can't imagine developed study of this book is worth more than digging into whatever his successors have said.
This wasn’t what I was expecting. I like myths and the history behind them is intriguing, but I did not expect such a clinical professor like take on it. It was drier than I expected, but I wasn’t fully aware of what I was getting myself into when I purchased.
It’s probably a good reference book if you’re writing an essay or paper in college on myths
It’s probably a good reference book if you’re writing an essay or paper in college on myths
This book is a look at the common traits that all mythology, religion and fairy tales share, how the hero in all of the world's folklore follows the same general path. The book follows the hero's journey by pulling excepts from both the most famous and the rather obscure sources. I was particularly interested in checking on those sources and reading the full story for myself. I to-be-read list because of this book alone is rather long (to say nothing of my already daunting list). The amount of knowledge Campbell collected in this field is astonishing. There was a good amount of psychology involved in the analysis, being not even a novice in the study of it, I really cannot comment on that aspect of the book. This is highly recommended for fans of mythology, those interested in reading mythology and those who are looking to create something epic, as George Lucas can attest. Well, I better go check if my copy of The Mahabharata has arrived yet (I did tell you I was checking in on those sources).
A fantastic book. Combining anthropology. philosophy, sociology, linguistics, literary theory, and psychology, this book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the art/culture of story telling, heroes, destiny, and how the self-reflecting psyche has rationalized the world as well as itself.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
I enjoyed the first part immensely >> but the second part was very boring and I couldn’t keep my interest/focus. In general, it’s an informative book with so many enlightening questions and ideas 💡