**Explore the Hero's Journey in stories as old as humanity and as new as last night's dream** The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change. -- Joseph Campbell Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faceshas influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero's Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world's mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction. As part of the Joseph Campbell Foundation's Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, this third edition features expanded illustrations, a comprehensive bibliography, and more...
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Electronic edition (with revisions and additions) copyright © 2020 by Joseph Campbell Foundation
Third edition (with revisions) copyright © 2008 by the Joseph Campbell Foundation
Second edition (with revisions) copyright © 1968 by Princeton University Press
Original edition copyright © 1949 by Bollingen Foundation and published by Pantheon Books
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For sources used, see the Bibliography section.
For sources of images use and other acknowledgments, see the Illustrations list.
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The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
At his death in 1987, Joseph Campbell left a significant body of published work that explored his lifelong passion, the complex of universal myths and symbols that he called “Mankind’s one great story.” He also left, however, a large volume of unreleased work: uncollected articles, notes, letters, and diaries, as well as audio- and videotape-recorded lectures.
Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF) — founded in 1990 to preserve, protect, and perpetuate Campbell’s work — has undertaken to create a digital archive of his papers and recordings and to publish The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell.
Robert Walter,
David Kudler,
TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER
About the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
Editor's Foreword to the 2020 Collected Works Edition
Notes on the Text
PREFACE TO THE 1949 EDITION
PROLOGUE - The Monomyth
1. Myth and Dream
2. Tragedy and Comedy
3. The Hero and the God
4. The World Navel
PART I - The Adventure of the Hero
CHAPTER I - Departure
1. The Call to Adventure
2. Refusal of the Call
3. Supernatural Aid
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
5. The Belly of the Whale
CHAPTER II - Initiation
1. The Road of Trials
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
3. Woman as the Temptress
4. Atonement with the Father
5. Apotheosis
6. The Ultimate Boon
CHAPTER III - Return
1. Refusal of the Return
2. The Magic Flight
3. Rescue from Without
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
5. Master of the Two Worlds
6. Freedom to Live
CHAPTER IV - The Keys
PART II - The Cosmogonic Cycle
CHAPTER I - Emanations
1. From Psychology to Metaphysics
2. The Universal Round
3. Out of the Void — Space
4. Within Space — Life
5. The Breaking of the One into the Manifold
6. Folk Stories of Creation
CHAPTER II - The Virgin Birth
1. Mother Universe
2. Matrix of Destiny
3. Womb of Redemption
4. Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood
CHAPTER III - Transformations of the Hero
1. The Primordial Hero and the Human
2. Childhood of the Human Hero
3. The Hero as Warrior
4. The Hero as Lover
5. The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant
6. The Hero as World Redeemer
7. The Hero as Saint
8. Departure of the Hero
CHAPTER IV - Dissolutions
1. End of the Microcosm
2. End of the Macrocosm
EPILOGUE - Myth and Society
1. The Shapeshifter
2. The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation
3. The Hero Today
Annotated Bibliography
About Joseph Campbell
About the Joseph Campbell Foundation
Acknowledgements
Illustrations List
Editor's Foreword
to the 2020 Collected Works Edition
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) was a pre-eminent American scholar of literature and comparative mythology.
