Joseph Campbell was born on the 26th of March 1904 in White Plains, New York, into an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family. His father, Charles William Campbell, was a successful hosiery importer who had risen from a peasant background in County Mayo, Ireland, to become a department store salesman and business owner. The family moved to New Rochelle, where a fire in 1919 destroyed their home, killing Campbell's maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who had tried to save her. This early trauma and the loss of his grandmother left a deep mark on the young Campbell, who would later describe the fire as a pivotal moment in his life. After graduating from the Canterbury School in 1921, Campbell attended Dartmouth College, where he studied biology and mathematics before switching to the humanities. He was an accomplished athlete, once among the fastest half-mile runners in the world, but it was his intellectual curiosity that would define his future. In 1924, during a family trip to Europe, Campbell met Jiddu Krishnamurti, the messiah-elect of the Theosophical Society, on a return ship. Their conversation about Indian philosophy sparked a lifelong interest in Hindu and Eastern thought. By 1927, Campbell had earned a Master of Arts degree in medieval literature from Columbia University, but he soon found himself at odds with the academic establishment. He withdrew from graduate studies because he could not get faculty approval to pursue Sanskrit and modern art alongside his medieval literature focus. Later in life, he joked that having a PhD in the liberal arts was a sign of incompetence, a sentiment that reflected his growing disdain for rigid academic structures.
The Great Depression forced Campbell into a period of intense self-directed study. From 1929 to 1934, he lived in a rented shack in Woodstock, New York, without running water, where he spent five years reading nine hours a day. He divided his day into four three-hour periods, spending three of them reading and one free. This isolation allowed him to develop a unique perspective on mythology and human culture, free from the constraints of university life. During this time, Campbell also traveled to California, where he became close friends with John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. He had an affair with Carol and lived next door to Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist who inspired the character of Doc in Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Campbell participated in Ricketts' social and professional activities and even joined him on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska, on the Grampus. Though Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts, he never completed it, a decision that would later influence his shift from fiction to nonfiction. In 1933, while teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story, Strictly Platonic, to Liberty magazine, marking the beginning of his career as a writer.
The Professor Who Married A Student
In 1934, Joseph Campbell accepted a position as Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, where he would remain for 38 years until his retirement in 1972. It was during this time that he met Jean Erdman, a dancer and choreographer who was one of his students. They married in 1938, and for most of their 49-year marriage, they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village, New York City. In the 1980s, they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu, dividing their time between the two cities. They did not have any children, a decision that reflected Campbell's belief that his life's work was his true legacy. Campbell's academic career was marked by his deep engagement with comparative mythology and religion, but it was also shaped by his personal relationships and intellectual influences. In the early years of World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer, and the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell took on the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, a project that occupied him for the following decade. This work would later form the foundation of his own scholarship and teaching.
In 1955, 1956, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College to travel to Asia for the first time. He spent six months in southern Asia, mostly India, and another six months in East Asia, mostly Japan. This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and it reinforced his belief in the necessity of teaching comparative mythology to a broader, non-academic audience. Campbell's time in Asia allowed him to experience the living traditions he had studied for so long, and it deepened his understanding of the universal themes that underlie all mythologies. His travels also inspired him to write about his experiences, resulting in books such as Baksheesh and Brahman: Asian Journals , India and Sake and Satori: Asian Journals , Japan. These works provided a window into the spiritual and cultural landscapes of Asia, and they helped to shape Campbell's later theories about the evolution of myth. Despite his academic success, Campbell remained a somewhat unconventional figure in the world of higher education. He was known for his engaging lectures and his ability to connect with students on a personal level, but he also faced criticism from some colleagues who felt that his approach to mythology was too broad and too influenced by psychology. Nevertheless, Campbell's influence on his students was profound, and many of them went on to become writers, artists, and thinkers who would carry his ideas into the wider world.The Hero With A Thousand Faces
The publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949 marked a turning point in Joseph Campbell's career and in the way the world understood mythology. Originally titled How to Read a Myth, the book was based on an introductory class on mythology that Campbell had been teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. It argued that hero stories from around the world, such as those of Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus, all share a similar mythological basis. Campbell called this common pattern the monomyth, or the hero's journey, a term he borrowed from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The book introduced the concept of the hero's journey to popular thinking and began to popularize the very idea of comparative mythology itself. Campbell asserted that wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed, and that mythology is absurd when treated as science or history. Instead, he believed that myths are living images that point to a deeper, transcendent reality.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces established Campbell's name outside of scholarly circles and remains, arguably, his most influential work to this day. The book's impact was felt across a wide range of fields, from literature and film to psychology and religion. Campbell's theory of the monomyth provided a framework for understanding the universal themes that underlie all human storytelling, and it inspired countless writers, artists, and thinkers to explore the deeper meanings of their own work. One of the most famous examples of Campbell's influence was the Star Wars saga, which George Lucas credited as being shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Lucas stated that the story of Star Wars was structured around the hero's journey, and the linkage between Campbell and Lucas was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Luke Skywalker on the cover. Campbell's ideas also influenced the development of Disney's 1994 film The Lion King, and many other films, including The Matrix series, the Batman series, and the Indiana Jones series. Campbell's work also inspired the creation of the seven-page company memo A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Hollywood screenwriter Christopher Vogler, which became a standard reference for screenwriters and storytellers. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was not without its critics, however. Some folklorists and academics argued that Campbell's approach to mythology was too broad and too influenced by psychology, and that he had selected stories that fit his preconceived mold while leaving out equally valid stories that did not. Despite these criticisms, The Hero with a Thousand Faces remains a landmark work in the field of comparative mythology and continues to inspire new generations of thinkers and creators.The Power Of Myth And The Grateful Dead
Campbell's widest popular recognition followed his collaboration with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, the year following Campbell's death. The series discussed mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes, and it featured Campbell's insights into the human condition and the role of myth in modern life. A book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast. The series and the book brought Campbell's ideas to a broad audience, and they helped to popularize the concept of the hero's journey and the idea that myth is a living, evolving force in human culture. One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted, and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his maxim to follow your bliss. He derived this idea from the Upanishads, and he saw it not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life. Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s, and by the time that The Power of Myth was aired, follow your bliss was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public, both religious and secular. During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, I should have said, follow your blisters.
Campbell's influence extended beyond the world of academia and into the realm of popular culture and music. He attended a Grateful Dead concert in 1986, and marveled that everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here! With the Grateful Dead, Campbell put on a conference called Ritual and Rapture from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead. The connection between Campbell and the Grateful Dead was a testament to the power of myth to bring people together and to create a sense of community and shared experience. Campbell's ideas also influenced the work of many other artists and creators, including novelists, songwriters, and video game designers. The novelist Richard Adams acknowledged a debt to Campbell's work and specifically to the concept of the monomyth, and in his best known work, Watership Down, Adams uses extracts from The Hero with a Thousand Faces as chapter epigrams. Dan Brown mentioned in a New York Times interview that Joseph Campbell's works, particularly The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, inspired him to create the character of Robert Langdon. Campbell's legacy was further cemented by the creation of the Joseph Campbell Foundation in 1991, which was established by his widow, Jean Erdman, and his longtime friend and editor, Robert Walter. The Foundation's initiatives include The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work, and the Erdman Campbell Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of comparative mythology. The Foundation also supports the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion, and culture, and it houses the collection of Campbell's library and papers at the OPUS Archives and Research Center.The Critic's Shadow And The Scholar's Defense
Despite his widespread popularity and influence, Joseph Campbell's work was not without its critics. American folklorist Barre Toelken argued that few psychologists have taken the time to become familiar with the complexities of folklore, and that, historically, Jung-influenced psychologists and authors have tended to build complex theories around single versions of a tale that support a theory or a proposal. Toelken cited Campbell's monomyth approach as an example of this tendency, arguing that Campbell could construct a monomyth of the hero only by citing those stories that fit his preconceived mold, and leaving out equally valid stories that did not fit the pattern. Similarly, American folklorist Alan Dundes was highly critical of both Campbell's approach to folklore, designating him as a non-expert and giving various examples of what he considers source bias in Campbell's theories, as well as media representation of Campbell as an expert on the subject of myth in popular culture. Dundes wrote that there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype. According to anthropologist Raymond Scupin, Campbell's theories have not been well received in anthropology because of his overgeneralizations, as well as other problems.
Campbell's Sanskrit scholarship has also been questioned. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former Sanskrit professor at the University of Toronto, said that he once met Campbell, and that the two hated each other at sight, commenting that when I met Campbell at a public gathering he was quoting Sanskrit verses. He had no clue as to what he was talking about; he had the most superficial knowledge of India but he could use it for his own aggrandizement. I remember thinking: this man is corrupt. I know that he was simply lying about his understanding. According to Richard Buchen, librarian of the Joseph Campbell Collection at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Campbell could not translate Sanskrit well, but worked closely with three scholars who did. Ellwood observes that The Masks of God series impressed literate laity more than specialists, and he quotes Stephen P. Dunn as remarking that in Occidental Mythology Campbell writes in a curiously archaic style , full of rhetorical questions, exclamations of wonder and delight, and expostulations directed at the reader, or perhaps at the author's other self , which is charming about a third of the time and rather annoying the rest. The critic Camille Paglia, writing in Sexual Personae (1990), expressed disagreement with Campbell's negative critique of fifth-century Athens in Occidental Mythology, arguing that Campbell missed the visionary and exalted androgyny in Greek statues of nude boys. Paglia has written that while Campbell is a seminal figure for many American feminists, she loathes him for his mawkishness and bad research. Paglia has called Campbell mushy and a false teacher, and described his work as a fanciful, showy mishmash. Campbell has also been accused of antisemitism by some authors. In Tikkun magazine, Tamar Frankiel noted that Campbell called Judaism the Yahweh Cult and that he spoke of Judaism in almost exclusively negative terms. In a 1989 New York Review of Books article, Brendan Gill accused Campbell of both antisemitism and prejudice against blacks. Gill's article resulted in a series of letters to the editor, some supporting the charge of antisemitism and others defending him. However, according to Robert S. Ellwood, Gill relied on scraps of evidence, largely anecdotal, to support the charges. In 1991, Masson also accused Campbell of hidden anti-Semitism and fascination with conservative, semifascistic views. Robert A. Segal's Joseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism offers 70 references. Despite these criticisms, Campbell's work continues to be studied and celebrated, and his ideas remain influential in a wide range of fields.The Final Journey And The Legacy Of Myth
Campbell's legacy continues to be felt in a wide range of fields, from literature and film to psychology and religion. His ideas about the hero's journey and the monomyth have inspired countless writers, artists, and thinkers, and his work remains a cornerstone of comparative mythology. The Joseph Campbell Foundation, established in 1991 by Campbell's widow, Jean Erdman, and his longtime friend and editor, Robert Walter, continues to promote Campbell's ideas and to support the study of comparative mythology, psychology, religion, and culture. The Foundation's initiatives include The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work, and the Erdman Campbell Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of comparative mythology. The Foundation also supports the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion, and culture, and it houses the collection of Campbell's library and papers at the OPUS Archives and Research Center. Campbell's influence extends beyond the world of academia and into the realm of popular culture and music, and his ideas continue to inspire new generations of thinkers and creators. The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, remains a landmark work in the field of comparative mythology, and it continues to be studied and celebrated by audiences around the world. Campbell's life and work serve as a testament to the power of myth to bring people together and to create a sense of community and shared experience, and his ideas remain as relevant today as they were when he first began to share them with the world.Joseph Campbell was born on the 26th of March 1904 in White Plains, New York, into an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family. His father, Charles William Campbell, was a successful hosiery importer who had risen from a peasant background in County Mayo, Ireland, to become a department store salesman and business owner. The family moved to New Rochelle, where a fire in 1919 destroyed their home, killing Campbell's maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who had tried to save her. This early trauma and the loss of his grandmother left a deep mark on the young Campbell, who would later describe the fire as a pivotal moment in his life. After graduating from the Canterbury School in 1921, Campbell attended Dartmouth College, where he studied biology and mathematics before switching to the humanities. He was an accomplished athlete, once among the fastest half-mile runners in the world, but it was his intellectual curiosity that would define his future. In 1924, during a family trip to Europe, Campbell met Jiddu Krishnamurti, the messiah-elect of the Theosophical Society, on a return ship. Their conversation about Indian philosophy sparked a lifelong interest in Hindu and Eastern thought. By 1927, Campbell had earned a Master of Arts degree in medieval literature from Columbia University, but he soon found himself at odds with the academic establishment. He withdrew from graduate studies because he could not get faculty approval to pursue Sanskrit and modern art alongside his medieval literature focus. Later in life, he joked that having a PhD in the liberal arts was a sign of incompetence, a sentiment that reflected his growing disdain for rigid academic structures.
The Great Depression forced Campbell into a period of intense self-directed study. From 1929 to 1934, he lived in a rented shack in Woodstock, New York, without running water, where he spent five years reading nine hours a day. He divided his day into four three-hour periods, spending three of them reading and one free. This isolation allowed him to develop a unique perspective on mythology and human culture, free from the constraints of university life. During this time, Campbell also traveled to California, where he became close friends with John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. He had an affair with Carol and lived next door to Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist who inspired the character of Doc in Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Campbell participated in Ricketts' social and professional activities and even joined him on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska, on the Grampus. Though Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts, he never completed it, a decision that would later influence his shift from fiction to nonfiction. In 1933, while teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story, Strictly Platonic, to Liberty magazine, marking the beginning of his career as a writer.
The Professor Who Married A Student
In 1934, Joseph Campbell accepted a position as Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, where he would remain for 38 years until his retirement in 1972. It was during this time that he met Jean Erdman, a dancer and choreographer who was one of his students. They married in 1938, and for most of their 49-year marriage, they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village, New York City. In the 1980s, they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu, dividing their time between the two cities. They did not have any children, a decision that reflected Campbell's belief that his life's work was his true legacy. Campbell's academic career was marked by his deep engagement with comparative mythology and religion, but it was also shaped by his personal relationships and intellectual influences. In the early years of World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer, and the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell took on the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, a project that occupied him for the following decade. This work would later form the foundation of his own scholarship and teaching.
In 1955, 1956, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College to travel to Asia for the first time. He spent six months in southern Asia, mostly India, and another six months in East Asia, mostly Japan. This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and it reinforced his belief in the necessity of teaching comparative mythology to a broader, non-academic audience. Campbell's time in Asia allowed him to experience the living traditions he had studied for so long, and it deepened his understanding of the universal themes that underlie all mythologies. His travels also inspired him to write about his experiences, resulting in books such as Baksheesh and Brahman: Asian Journals , India and Sake and Satori: Asian Journals , Japan. These works provided a window into the spiritual and cultural landscapes of Asia, and they helped to shape Campbell's later theories about the evolution of myth. Despite his academic success, Campbell remained a somewhat unconventional figure in the world of higher education. He was known for his engaging lectures and his ability to connect with students on a personal level, but he also faced criticism from some colleagues who felt that his approach to mythology was too broad and too influenced by psychology. Nevertheless, Campbell's influence on his students was profound, and many of them went on to become writers, artists, and thinkers who would carry his ideas into the wider world.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
The publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949 marked a turning point in Joseph Campbell's career and in the way the world understood mythology. Originally titled How to Read a Myth, the book was based on an introductory class on mythology that Campbell had been teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. It argued that hero stories from around the world, such as those of Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus, all share a similar mythological basis. Campbell called this common pattern the monomyth, or the hero's journey, a term he borrowed from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The book introduced the concept of the hero's journey to popular thinking and began to popularize the very idea of comparative mythology itself. Campbell asserted that wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed, and that mythology is absurd when treated as science or history. Instead, he believed that myths are living images that point to a deeper, transcendent reality.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces established Campbell's name outside of scholarly circles and remains, arguably, his most influential work to this day. The book's impact was felt across a wide range of fields, from literature and film to psychology and religion. Campbell's theory of the monomyth provided a framework for understanding the universal themes that underlie all human storytelling, and it inspired countless writers, artists, and thinkers to explore the deeper meanings of their own work. One of the most famous examples of Campbell's influence was the Star Wars saga, which George Lucas credited as being shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Lucas stated that the story of Star Wars was structured around the hero's journey, and the linkage between Campbell and Lucas was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Luke Skywalker on the cover. Campbell's ideas also influenced the development of Disney's 1994 film The Lion King, and many other films, including The Matrix series, the Batman series, and the Indiana Jones series. Campbell's work also inspired the creation of the seven-page company memo A Practical Guide to The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Hollywood screenwriter Christopher Vogler, which became a standard reference for screenwriters and storytellers. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was not without its critics, however. Some folklorists and academics argued that Campbell's approach to mythology was too broad and too influenced by psychology, and that he had selected stories that fit his preconceived mold while leaving out equally valid stories that did not. Despite these criticisms, The Hero with a Thousand Faces remains a landmark work in the field of comparative mythology and continues to inspire new generations of thinkers and creators.
The Power Of Myth And The Grateful Dead
Campbell's widest popular recognition followed his collaboration with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, the year following Campbell's death. The series discussed mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes, and it featured Campbell's insights into the human condition and the role of myth in modern life. A book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast. The series and the book brought Campbell's ideas to a broad audience, and they helped to popularize the concept of the hero's journey and the idea that myth is a living, evolving force in human culture. One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted, and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his maxim to follow your bliss. He derived this idea from the Upanishads, and he saw it not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life. Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s, and by the time that The Power of Myth was aired, follow your bliss was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public, both religious and secular. During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, I should have said, follow your blisters.
Campbell's influence extended beyond the world of academia and into the realm of popular culture and music. He attended a Grateful Dead concert in 1986, and marveled that everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here! With the Grateful Dead, Campbell put on a conference called Ritual and Rapture from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead. The connection between Campbell and the Grateful Dead was a testament to the power of myth to bring people together and to create a sense of community and shared experience. Campbell's ideas also influenced the work of many other artists and creators, including novelists, songwriters, and video game designers. The novelist Richard Adams acknowledged a debt to Campbell's work and specifically to the concept of the monomyth, and in his best known work, Watership Down, Adams uses extracts from The Hero with a Thousand Faces as chapter epigrams. Dan Brown mentioned in a New York Times interview that Joseph Campbell's works, particularly The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, inspired him to create the character of Robert Langdon. Campbell's legacy was further cemented by the creation of the Joseph Campbell Foundation in 1991, which was established by his widow, Jean Erdman, and his longtime friend and editor, Robert Walter. The Foundation's initiatives include The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work, and the Erdman Campbell Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of comparative mythology. The Foundation also supports the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion, and culture, and it houses the collection of Campbell's library and papers at the OPUS Archives and Research Center.
The Critic's Shadow And The Scholar's Defense
Despite his widespread popularity and influence, Joseph Campbell's work was not without its critics. American folklorist Barre Toelken argued that few psychologists have taken the time to become familiar with the complexities of folklore, and that, historically, Jung-influenced psychologists and authors have tended to build complex theories around single versions of a tale that support a theory or a proposal. Toelken cited Campbell's monomyth approach as an example of this tendency, arguing that Campbell could construct a monomyth of the hero only by citing those stories that fit his preconceived mold, and leaving out equally valid stories that did not fit the pattern. Similarly, American folklorist Alan Dundes was highly critical of both Campbell's approach to folklore, designating him as a non-expert and giving various examples of what he considers source bias in Campbell's theories, as well as media representation of Campbell as an expert on the subject of myth in popular culture. Dundes wrote that there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype. According to anthropologist Raymond Scupin, Campbell's theories have not been well received in anthropology because of his overgeneralizations, as well as other problems.
Campbell's Sanskrit scholarship has also been questioned. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former Sanskrit professor at the University of Toronto, said that he once met Campbell, and that the two hated each other at sight, commenting that when I met Campbell at a public gathering he was quoting Sanskrit verses. He had no clue as to what he was talking about; he had the most superficial knowledge of India but he could use it for his own aggrandizement. I remember thinking: this man is corrupt. I know that he was simply lying about his understanding. According to Richard Buchen, librarian of the Joseph Campbell Collection at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Campbell could not translate Sanskrit well, but worked closely with three scholars who did. Ellwood observes that The Masks of God series impressed literate laity more than specialists, and he quotes Stephen P. Dunn as remarking that in Occidental Mythology Campbell writes in a curiously archaic style , full of rhetorical questions, exclamations of wonder and delight, and expostulations directed at the reader, or perhaps at the author's other self , which is charming about a third of the time and rather annoying the rest. The critic Camille Paglia, writing in Sexual Personae (1990), expressed disagreement with Campbell's negative critique of fifth-century Athens in Occidental Mythology, arguing that Campbell missed the visionary and exalted androgyny in Greek statues of nude boys. Paglia has written that while Campbell is a seminal figure for many American feminists, she loathes him for his mawkishness and bad research. Paglia has called Campbell mushy and a false teacher, and described his work as a fanciful, showy mishmash. Campbell has also been accused of antisemitism by some authors. In Tikkun magazine, Tamar Frankiel noted that Campbell called Judaism the Yahweh Cult and that he spoke of Judaism in almost exclusively negative terms. In a 1989 New York Review of Books article, Brendan Gill accused Campbell of both antisemitism and prejudice against blacks. Gill's article resulted in a series of letters to the editor, some supporting the charge of antisemitism and others defending him. However, according to Robert S. Ellwood, Gill relied on scraps of evidence, largely anecdotal, to support the charges. In 1991, Masson also accused Campbell of hidden anti-Semitism and fascination with conservative, semifascistic views. Robert A. Segal's Joseph Campbell on Jews and Judaism offers 70 references. Despite these criticisms, Campbell's work continues to be studied and celebrated, and his ideas remain influential in a wide range of fields.
The Final Journey And The Legacy Of Myth
Campbell's legacy continues to be felt in a wide range of fields, from literature and film to psychology and religion. His ideas about the hero's journey and the monomyth have inspired countless writers, artists, and thinkers, and his work remains a cornerstone of comparative mythology. The Joseph Campbell Foundation, established in 1991 by Campbell's widow, Jean Erdman, and his longtime friend and editor, Robert Walter, continues to promote Campbell's ideas and to support the study of comparative mythology, psychology, religion, and culture. The Foundation's initiatives include The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a series of books and recordings that aims to pull together Campbell's myriad-minded work, and the Erdman Campbell Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of comparative mythology. The Foundation also supports the Mythological RoundTables, a network of local groups around the globe that explore the subjects of comparative mythology, psychology, religion, and culture, and it houses the collection of Campbell's library and papers at the OPUS Archives and Research Center. Campbell's influence extends beyond the world of academia and into the realm of popular culture and music, and his ideas continue to inspire new generations of thinkers and creators. The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988, remains a landmark work in the field of comparative mythology, and it continues to be studied and celebrated by audiences around the world. Campbell's life and work serve as a testament to the power of myth to bring people together and to create a sense of community and shared experience, and his ideas remain as relevant today as they were when he first began to share them with the world.