The Mythic Image

By Joseph Campbell

Book Overview

A paperback edition of Campbell's major study of the mythology of the world's high civilizations over five millennia. It includes nearly 450 illustrations. The text is the same as that of the 1974 edition. Mythologist Joseph Campbell was a masterful storyteller, able to weave tales from every corner of the world into compelling, even spellbinding, narratives. His interest in comparative mythology began in childhood, when the young Joe Campbell was taken to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden. He started writing articles on Native American mythology in high school, and the parallels between age-old myths and the mythic themes in literature and dreams became a lifelong preoccupation. Campbell's best-known work is The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which became a New York Times paperback best-seller for Princeton in 1988 after Campbell's star turn on the Bill Moyers television program The Power of Myth . During his early years as a professor of comparative religion at Sarah Lawrence College, Campbell made the acquaintance of Indologist Heinrich Zimmer, a kindred spirit who introduced him to Paul and Mary Mellon, the founders of Bollingen Series. They chose Campbell's The Mythic Image as the culmination of the series, giving it the closing position--number one hundred. A lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced study of the mythology of the world's high civilizations, The Mythic Image received a front-cover review in the New York Times Book Review upon publication. Through the medium of visual art, the book explores the relation of dreams to myth and demonstrates the important differences between oriental and occidental interpretations of dreams and life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691018391
• ISBN13: 9780691018393
• Release Date: November 1981
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 568 Pages
• Weight: 2.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.4" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

A true gem

A gem for anyone interested in symbols and myths. Campbell may wander off sometimes but he never loses what he is talking about out of sight.

No Color Plates!

Here is a valuable tip if you are wondering whether to buy the hardcover or paperback version. The paperback is in a reduced format and the 34 color plates in the hardcover are rendered in black and white. Since this IS a book that deals with images, it would seem preferable to choose the hardcover. The text IS the same as the hardcover.

Buy this book because the world needs more Joe Campbell's

Let's say you don't want to sit down and read Hero w/ a Thousand Faces, or any other Joseph Campbell works that are very long and more text-based. Perhaps, though, you know a little about the man, and want to learn a little more about what he thinks of things. This is the book that you're looking for, then. It's an incredibly lovingly written study of mythological / religious symbology through most places & times in the history of our little blue rock. With about 500 illustrations, I believe, it makes just as proper a coffee table book as it does a reference source. What's wonderful is that it doesn't take a look at cultures one by one, and examine their belief systems, each in turn--it examines the symbols themselves, instead, and then focuses on the commonalities in the world's living and lost theological systems that have grown out of these archetypal symbols. And like I said, maybe you don't want to read 5 or 6 volumes of scholarly literature just to get at the parts that speak to you. So you start with this book, you see what's what, and THEN you dive in a little deeper from there. Quite possibly the non-fiction book I will keep with me for the rest of my life. Get it for yourself.

Joe Campbell at his best!

One of the last projects he worked on, this beautifully illustrated book puts together Campbell's views on myth as manafested through art. This could be his very best achievement as a "comparative mythologist." Organized around the theam of the world-as-dream (from Hinduism to *Finnagan's Wake*), it discusses several universal motifs in art/myth (the virgin birth, the world axis, the death and resurection of the hero...) and gives Campbell's explainatons for for their commonality. Manny of the artworks discussed in his audio tape lectures are shown and analyzed here. I am an art educator, and I've found that I can build almost my whole (multicultural) curiculum around this book.