Joseph campbell books pdf
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Joseph Campbell
Born
in White Plains, NY, The United StatesMarch 26, 1904
Died
October 30, 1987
Website
http://jcf.org
Genre
Religion, Social Sciences, Mythology
Influences
James Frazer, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Leo Frobenius, Krishnamurti, HJames Frazer, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Leo Frobenius, Krishnamurti, Heinrich Zimmer, Stanislav Grof, Johann Bachofen, Otto Rank, Thomas Mann, Schopenhauer, James Joyce, Abraham Maslow, Adolf Bastian...more
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Joseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles.
Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art o
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Joseph Campbell: His Life and Contributions
In reading Campbell, I noticed that one of his points was that we should not search for meaning in life but rather should focus upon experiencing life. What did he mean?
Are there certain components or elements that are found in all types of myths?
All myths are metaphors. Understanding metaphors is essential to understanding and interpreting myths. All myths work metaphorically and symbolically. They are rich in imagery. We not only learn from the obvious lessons but from the more subtle and more figurative dimensions. A myth is to be read visually as if it were a dream or movie. Then we must ponder the pictures to extract the metaphoric message. This fascinates some of us while others ask, "Why do you want to read those old stories? They are not that interesting. There are contemporary stories that are more amusing." The richness of how the visual dimension works psychologically is the key to understanding the power of the myth. A picture is worth a thousand words.
A dream works similarly. There are not three talking points a
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One hundred years ago, on March 26th in 1904, Joseph John Campbell was born in White Plains, New York. Joe, as he came to be known, was the first child of a middle-class Roman Catholic couple, Charles and Josephine Campbell.
Joe’s earliest years were largely unremarkable; but then, when he was seven years old, his father took him and his younger brother, Charlie, to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
The evening was a high point in Joe’s life; for, although the cowboys were clearly the show’s stars, as Joe would later write, he “became fascinated, seized, obsessed, by the figure of a naked American Indian with his ear to the ground, a bow and arrow in his hand, and a look of special knowledge in his eyes.”
It was Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher whose writings would later greatly influence Campbell, who observed that:
“… the experiences and illuminations of childhood and early youth become in later life the types, standards and patterns of all subsequent knowledge and experience, or as it were, the categories according to which all later things are classified—not alway
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