Talk:The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Does this come off too much as an advertisement?
"The Joseph Campbell Foundation and New World Library issued a new edition of The Hero with a Thousand Faces in July 2008 as part of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series of books, audio and video recordings." 97.126.27.45 (talk) 18:09, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Post structuralism
The article states, in the criticism section, that the book violates the expectations of post structuralism. WTF? PSism was only formulated in the 60, a full 10 years, if not closer to 20 after the Hero with a thousand Faces was published... holding a work to a standard that did not even exist when it was written is plain stupid. Either it has merit, or not... and given that it's still talked about so much, I'd guess that it does. Or is it that the book has no real merit as a mythological study, but is a real neat guide for Hollywood to write good stories? --Svartalf 09:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Of course it's going to violate post-structrualism since it's really post-structuralism's opposite. However, this can hardly be considered a criticism. The monomyth is about patterns, not French philosophy.--214.13.130.100 (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Why don't we start the real article?
For now we have an index with an extremely brief and concise premise of the book, and a couple of quotes. The rest is devoted to trivia (mainly the influence on Star Wars!!). We need as soon as we can some analysis on the book itself, which -as it can be seen by looking at the index- is pretty varied and complex. Nazroon 04:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Moving material between Hero and Monomyth articles
If the purpose of maintaining two separate, but very similar articles is (1) The Hero article is supposed to focus more on Campbell's ideas, and (2) the Monomyth article is supposed to focus more on the application of the monomyth concept, especially in modern story-creation, then a substantial amount of material has to be re-organized between the two articles. I have started that process by duplicating material in the two articles. The next step will be to eliminate much of the duplicative material in one of the articles.

Of course, all this can be solved by merging the two articles - since the distinction listed above is pretty subtle, and is not likely to be understood by most readers (or for that matter, editors!).NorCalHistory 02:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Clean-up Proposal
My intent is to begin clean-up of the following four over-lapping Joseph Campbell-related articles:


 * The Hero with a Thousand Faces: An article which I understand to be a discussion of Campbell's seminal 1949 book, which applied the term monomyth to the underlying structure of the Hero's journey.
 * Monomyth: An article which appears to be focused on the application of the monomyth structure in modern movies and other writing.
 * The Hero' s journey (phrase): An article which is very similar to the Monomyth article - that is, a discussion of the Hero's journey concept outlined by Campbell.
 * The Hero's Journey (note different capitalization and spacing): An article limited to a discussion of a separate book and documentary with that title about the life of Joseph Campbell.

The first step was to try to clean-up and re-focus the The Hero with a Thousand Faces article and the Monomyth article (only). There was modern application material in the The Hero with a Thousand Faces article that looked like it belonged in the Monomyth article, and explanatory material in the Monomyth article that looked like it belonged in the The Hero with a Thousand Faces article. Hence, the first step was to duplicate the material into what looked like the "proper" article.

The intended next step will be to then clean-up both articles - by deleting and summarizing material to better focus those two articles on their two subjects (book vs. modern application).

The following step after that will be to start a discussion about merging the Monomyth article and the The Hero' s journey (phrase) articles. Those two terms are usually used synonymously; I'm not sure that the confusion caused by two articles with almost identical topics is worth whatever benefit might be derived (but that's two steps down the road here).

So, to summarize - This is a proposal about cleaning-up these four Campbell-related articles, with the first step being cleaning up The Hero with a Thousand Faces article and the Monomyth article. (I'm going to post parts of this in all four articles). NorCalHistory 13:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!
Excellent work, Æµ§œš¹ - much appreciated. You are a step ahead of what I'd planned, but I've gotten tied up elsewhere for a few weeks. Thank you! NorCalHistory 15:51, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

David Brin
This: Novelist David Brin has been openly critical of his theories. is intriguing to me. Can someone please expand on this? I saw nothing about this in Mr. Brin's article.

Yeah, someone knowledgeable should put up what he said and when and where. 68.97.185.89 23:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, he wrote The Postman so he must know what he's talking about. Kortoso (talk) 23:04, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Read this in undergrad
Still see the monomyth in everyday life! Food for thought. Thanks J.C.!

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 13:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The latter half of the book consists entirely of the Cosmogonic Cycle, why is there no discussion of it in the article? There is more to the book than the phases of the hero quest. I hope someone will include a summary and discussion of the Cosmogonic Cycle. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.1.80 (talk) 19:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Book seems not right
I have started to read the book myself, but could not get too far into it, as I was disgusted by the way that it is based on a predetermined idea and supporting research found for it. They ignored other possibilities and any arguements to the countary of what the book was pushing. They should of included those arguements at the least, if of to refute them. As far as I am concerned, the book is rubbish. Corrupt one (talk) 23:46, 23 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Isn't that the scientific method? You start with a hypothesis then gather evidence to measure it.--214.13.130.100 (talk) 17:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, that would be the opposite of science. You're supposed to start with a hypothesis and then try to disprove it (or, rather, you try to prove it by being unable to disprove it).  Otherwise, you're not much different than all that preceded the scientific method.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  22:10, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * To each his or her own. Campbell did in fact start by studying the anthropological and psychological literature for quite a long time before he developed the thesis that the universal patterns found in hero tales spring from a biological, psychological source (he'd been studying and teaching myth for twenty years before he wrote this book). And the introduction does in fact lay out the scientific basis (as of 1949) for his thesis—though not, perhaps, in as much depth as he would have done for a scientific paper; this was always intended as an introductory work for the lay public, rather than a purely academic work. However, if it didn't work for you, it didn't work for you.David Kudler (talk) 22:51, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * He also points out clearly that few myths if any cleave to this exact structure. Kortoso (talk) 23:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)


 * And this is not a forum for lit crit. Kortoso (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Publication dates
Book was also published in 2004 as a commemorative edition. How does that get recorded? See: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7803.html -Alex  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.166.175.2 (talk) 16:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That edition has been added; it was a simple resetting of the original text and art with no changes or additions, and so is not seen as a major edition in its own right.Dkudler (talk) 05:12, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Iron Dream?
Is there any reason that link belongs in this article? Kortoso (talk) 22:42, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Modern scholarly views?
Bart Ehrman doesn't seem to be a fan of Campbell's -- are his views still accepted in academia, or just popular among artists and wrtiers? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 07:49, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

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