Joseph Campbell
Writer and mythology scholar
Joseph Campbell was an American writer and literature professor who worked in comparative mythology. He is best known for The Hero with a Thousand Faces and its idea of a shared hero's journey.
2 summaries 29 min of listening
American Born 1904 in White Plains, United States Died 1987
Influenced by Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud
About Joseph Campbell
Campbell lived from 1904 to 1987. He studied at Columbia University, where he focused on medieval literature, and went on to study in Paris and Munich. In 1934 he joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, where he taught for many years. The Hero with a Thousand Faces appeared in 1949. In it, Campbell argued that heroic myths from many cultures follow one basic pattern, which he called the monomyth. He also wrote the four-volume The Masks of God and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. In 1988, after his death, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, brought his ideas to millions of people.