Monomyth of the Hero's Journey

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* Book: The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell.

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Description

From the Wikipedia:

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.

Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychologist Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord Raglan, who discuss hero narrative patterns in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis and ritualism.[1] Eventually, hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology. Campbell used the monomyth to deconstruct and compare religions.


In his famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), he describes the narrative pattern as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.


Campbell's theories regarding the concept of a "monomyth" have been the subject of criticism from scholars, particularly folklorists (scholars active in folklore studies), who have dismissed the concept as a non-scholarly approach suffering from source-selection bias among other criticisms.”

“In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell summaries the narrative pattern of the monomyth as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.[12]

Campbell describes 17 stages of the monomyth. Not all monomyths necessarily contain all 17 stages explicitly; some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order.In the terminology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the stages are the individual mythemes which are "bundled" or assembled into the structure of the monomyth


The 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three "acts" or sections:

  • Departure (also Separation),
  • Initiation (sometimes subdivided into A. Descent and B. Initiation) and
  • Return.


In the departure part of the narrative, the hero or protagonist lives in the ordinary world and receives a call to go on an adventure. The hero is reluctant to follow the call but is helped by a mentor figure.

The initiation section begins with the hero then traversing the threshold to an unknown or "special world", where he faces tasks or trials, either alone or with the assistance of helpers.

The hero eventually reaches "the innermost cave" or the central crisis of his adventure, where he must undergo "the ordeal" where he overcomes the main obstacle or enemy, undergoing "apotheosis" and gaining his reward (a treasure or "elixir").

The hero must then return to the ordinary world with his reward. He may be pursued by the guardians of the special world, or he may be reluctant to return and maybe rescued or forced to return by intervention from the outside.

In the return section, the hero again traverses the threshold between the worlds, returning to the ordinary world with the treasure or elixir he gained, which he may now use for the benefit of his fellow man. The hero himself is transformed by the adventure and gains wisdom or spiritual power over both worlds.”

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey )


More information

The other important book by Joseph Campbell is the four-volume: Masks of God.

  1. The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology
  2. The Masks of God, Volume 2: Oriental Mythology
  3. The Masks of God, Volume 3: Occidental Mythology
  4. The Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology