Heros journey free#

Campbell had met Carol's sister, Idell, on a Honolulu cruise and she introduced him to the Steinbecks. And this went on for five years straight.' Ĭampbell traveled to California for a year (1931–1932), continuing his independent studies and becoming a close friend of the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day.

Heros journey free#

He later said that he 'would divide the day into four three-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the three-hour periods, and free one of them . There, he contemplated the next course of his life while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. With the arrival of the Great Depression, Campbell spent the next five years (1929–1934) living in a rented shack in Woodstock, New York. Later in life he jested that it is a sign of incompetence to have a PhD in the liberal arts, the discipline covering his work. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from graduate studies. On his return to Columbia University in 1929, Campbell expressed a desire to pursue the study of Sanskrit and modern art in addition to medieval literature. He learned to read and speak French and German.

Campbell studied Old French, Provençal, and Sanskrit at the University of Paris and the University of Munich. In 1927, he received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe. On the ship during his return trip he encountered the messiah elect of the Theosophical Society, Jiddu Krishnamurti they discussed Indian philosophy, sparking in Campbell an interest in Hindu and Indian thought. In 1924, Campbell traveled to Europe with his family. An accomplished athlete, he received awards in track and field events, and, for a time, was among the fastest half-mile runners in the world. At Dartmouth he had joined Delta Tau Delta. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1925 and a Master of Arts degree in medieval literature in 1927. While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. In 1921, Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. In 1919, a fire destroyed the family home in New Rochelle, killing his maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who tried to save her. During his childhood, he moved with his family to nearby New Rochelle, New York. Campbell was raised in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family he related that his paternal grandfather Charles had been 'a peasant' who came to Boston from County Mayo in Ireland, and became the gardener and caretaker at the Lyman estate at Waltham, where his son Charles William Campbell grew up and became a successful salesman at a department store prior to establishing his hosiery business. Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, on March 26, 1904, the elder son of hosiery importer and wholesaler Charles William Campbell, from Waltham, Massachusetts, and Josephine (née Lynch), from New York.

6.4 Historical Atlas of World Mythology.

3 Comparative mythology and Campbell's theories.

Ĭampbell's approach to folklore topics such as myth and his influence on popular culture has been the subject of criticism, including from folklorists. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: 'Follow your bliss.' He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga. Since the publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer.