On Friday I presented a brief overview of Campbell’s theory, hoping to give you some perspective as we move forward. What follows is a condensed version.

Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949, after extensive studies of mythology and religions throughout the world. The work has since become an essential work for anyone wishing to explore the field of comparative mythology. Here, the Joseph Campbell foundation ((Check out their website.)) describes the work:

In this study of the myth of the hero, Campbell posits the existence of a Monomyth (a word he borrowed from James Joyce), a universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture. While outlining the basic stages of this mythic cycle, he also explores common variations in the hero’s journey, which, he argues, is an operative metaphor, not only for an individual, but for a culture as well. The Hero would prove to have a major influence on generations of creative artists—from the Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s to contemporary film-makers today—and would, in time, come to be acclaimed as a classic.

The steps in this “hero’s journey” are deceptively simple as Campbell presents them in the third section of the Prologue:

Sound familiar? It should, as many (most? ((One of the major criticisms of Campbell’s work is that it is too general, glosses over too many details within a story to be of any value. We’ll discuss as we move forward. And don’t get me started about the fact that the hero is always presented as male…))) modern and mythic stories follow this pattern. Of course, when the hero “ventures forth,” it can be literal or metaphorical: Neo hops into the Matrix; Ralph Jack, and Piggy land on the island; Alice ((Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)), and Dante ((Divine Comedy by Dante)) fall into their holes; Coraline ((Coraline by Neil Gaiman)) and Lucy and Edmund ((The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis)) move through their doorways. Remember, though, Neo was awakening to the “real world,” while Alice and Dante fell asleep.

Of course, they follow this one, too:

It’s the dramatic structure you learned in gradeschool ((or by watching M*A*S*H religiously)).

What makes Campbell’s structure interesting for us is it provides a language, a patch of common ground, for discussing the myths we will encounter in the Metamorphoses and in our daily lives.

Your reading for this weekend (“The Monomyth”) should clear much of this up, but definitely come to class with questions.