Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human condition. 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.
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. His philosophy has been summarized by his own often repeated phrase: "Follow your bliss."Campbell's biography and Joseph Campbell: "Follow Your Bliss" from the Joseph Campbell Foundation website. He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga.
Life
Background Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, on March 26, 1904, the elder son of hosiery importer and wholesalerThe Encyclopaedia of World Biography (2nd ed.). Vol. 3. Brice- Ch'i Pai-Shih, Gale Research. 1998. p. 253. Charles William Campbell, from Waltham, Massachusetts, and Josephine (née Lynch), from New York.The Hero's Journey- Joseph Campbell on his life and works, Centennial Edition, ed. Phil Cousineau, Joseph Campbell Foundation/ New World Library, 2003, p. xxvi 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: A Fire in the Mind- The Authorized Biography, Stephen and Robin Larsen, Doubleday, 1991, p. 7The Hero's Journey – Joseph Campbell on his life and works, Centennial Edition, ed. Phil Cousineau, Joseph Campbell Foundation/ New World Library, 2003, p. 3 During his childhood, he moved with his family to New Rochelle, New York. In 1919, a fire destroyed the family home in New Rochelle, killing his maternal grandmother and injuring his father, who tried to save her.Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind- The Authorized Biography, Stephen and Robin Larsen, Doubleday, 1991, p. 23
In 1921, Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1925 and a Master of Arts in medieval literature in 1927. At Dartmouth he had joined Delta Tau Delta. 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.
In 1924, Campbell traveled to Europe with his family. 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.Joseph Campbell (1904–1987). Joseph Campbell Bio. Retrieved on January 20, 2020 In 1927, he received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe. Campbell studied Old French, Provençal, and Sanskrit at the University of Paris and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He learned to read and speak French and German.
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. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from graduate studies. 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.
Great Depression With the arrival of the Great Depression, Campbell spent the next five years (1929–1934) living in a rented shack in Woodstock, New York. Citing a conversation between Campbell and Bill Moyers. "There was a wonderful old man up in Woodstock, New York, who had a piece of property he would rent out for twenty dollars a year or so to any young person he thought might have a future in the arts. There was no running water, only here and there a well and a pump. ... That is where I did most of my basic reading and work." There, he contemplated the next course of his lifeLarsen and Larsen, 2002, p. 160 while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. 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 ... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight."
Campbell 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. Campbell had met Carol's sister, Idell, on a Honolulu cruise and she introduced him to the Steinbecks. Campbell had an affair with Carol. On the Monterey Peninsula, Campbell, like John Steinbeck, fell under the spell of the marine biologist Ed Ricketts (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels).Larsen and Larsen, 2002, chapters 8 and 9. Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with Xenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the Grampus. Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as a hero but, unlike Steinbeck, did not complete his book.Tamm, Eric Enno (2005) Of Myths and Men in Monterey: "Ed Heads" See Doc Ricketts as a Cult Figure, seaaroundus.org; accessed August 27, 2016.
Bruce Robison writes that
Campbell continued his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the Canterbury School in Connecticut, during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction. While teaching at the Canterbury School, Campbell sold his first short story Strictly Platonic to Liberty magazine.Larsen and Larsen, 2002, p. 214; Pacifica Graduate Institute | Joseph Campbell & Marija Gimbutas Library | Joseph Campbell – Chronology
Sarah Lawrence College In 1934, Campbell accepted a position as professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. In 1938, he married one of his former students, the dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman. For most of their 49 years of marriage they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City. In the 1980s they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu and divided their time between the two cities. They did not have any children.
Early in World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell was given the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, which he would do over the following decade.
In 1955–1956, as the last volume of Zimmer's posthumous treatise, The Art of Indian Asia, Its Mythology and Transformations, was finally about to be published, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College and traveled, for the first time, to Asia. He spent six months in southern Asia (mostly India) and another six in East Asia (mostly Japan). This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and also on the necessity for teaching comparative mythology to a larger, non-academic audience.See Joseph Campbell, Baksheesh and Brahman: Asian Journals – India and Sake and Satori: Asian Journals – Japan, New World Library, 2002, 2003.
In a 1957 New York Times article, Campbell discussed some books by philosophy writer Alan Watts.
In 1972, Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years.
Later life and death
Campbell attended a Grateful Dead concert in 1986, observing, "Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!" With Grateful Dead, Campbell put on a conference called "Ritual and Rapture from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead".
Campbell died at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, on October 30, 1987, from complications of esophageal cancer."Joseph Campbell, Writer Known For His Scholarship on Mythology ", The New York TimesJoseph Campbell grave marker Before his death he had completed filming the series of interviews with Bill Moyers that aired the following spring as The Power of Myth. He is buried in O'ahu Cemetery, Honolulu.
Influences
Art, literature, philosophy
Campbell often referred to the work of modern writers James Joyce and Thomas Mann in his lectures and writings, as well as to the art of Pablo Picasso. He was introduced to their work during his stay as a graduate student in Paris. Campbell eventually corresponded with Mann.Joseph Campbell Collection and at the OPUS Archive.
The works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche had a profound effect on Campbell's thinking; he quoted their writing frequently.Campbell, J. (2003). The hero's journey (3rd ed.). Novato, CA: New World Library. p. 16
The "follow your bliss" philosophy attributed to Campbell following the original broadcast of The Power of Myth (see below) derives from the Hindu Upanishads; however, Campbell was possibly also influenced by the 1922 Sinclair Lewis novel Babbitt. In The Power of Myth, Campbell quotes from the novel:
Psychology and anthropology
The anthropologist Leo Frobenius and his disciple Adolf Ellegard Jensen were important to Campbell's view of cultural history. Campbell was also influenced by the psychological work of Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof.
Campbell's ideas regarding myth and its relation to the human psyche are dependent in part on the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud, but in particular on the work of Jung, whose studies of human psychology greatly influenced Campbell. Campbell's conception of myth is closely related to the Jungian method of dream interpretation, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation. Jung's insights into archetypes were heavily influenced by the Bardo Thodol (also known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead). In his book The Mythic , Campbell quotes Jung's statement about the Bardo Thodol, that it
Comparative mythology and theories Monomyth
Campbell's concept of monomyth (one myth) refers to the theory that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great story. The theory is based on the observation that a common pattern exists beneath the narrative elements of most great myths, regardless of their origin or time of creation. Campbell often referred to the ideas of Adolf Bastian and his distinction between what he called "folk" and "elementary" ideas, the latter referring to the prime matter of monomyth while the former to the multitude of local forms the myth takes in order to remain an up-to-date carrier of sacred meanings. The central pattern most studied by Campbell is often referred to as "the hero's journey" and was first described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). An enthusiast of novelist James Joyce, Campbell borrowed the term "monomyth" from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Campbell also made heavy use of Carl Jung's theories on the structure of the human psyche, and he often used terms such as anima, animus and ego consciousness.