Jan 18
I was having a mental conversation with myself this morning, contemplating how to teach Joseph Campbell’s writing style to my students. The trajectory of my thoughts led me to the almost-cliché Hero’s Journey. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell images the Journey thusly:
One key point of the Hero’s Journey is that it is a circle. The Hero leaves, the Hero must return. If… Continue reading
Jun 26
First, a couple disclaimers:
One, I have not seen Brave or any of the new Snow White features as of the time of this writing. I intend to see Brave this weekend, but we’ll have to see what this weekend brings.
Two, as a future parent, I’m not disturbed by the Disney Princesses as they appear in film. They all represent a young woman who is trying to… Continue reading
Jul 29
When I was writing my Master’s thesis, I was asked to do the impossible: to define "myth." I had read enough of Joseph Campbell’s works to understand that "myth" in his use of the word is not definable. Further, to define it would destroy the very nature of mythology. Faced with this dilemma, I nonetheless set out to dream up a definition of "myth." My working definition came to me… Continue reading
Jun 27
I constantly find myself revisiting this episode in the Power of Myth series. It’s one of the best interviews between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, probably because it plays into Campbell’s expertise much better than the other ones. Or maybe it’s because I’ve seen it so many times, it just seems this way because it is so familiar to me. So a bunch of us gather in the living room… Continue reading
May 30
Yesterday, I lead a roundtable for a local study group The Hubs and I have been participating in for awhile now. The group started as a study of the Manly P. Hall book, The Secret Teaching of All Ages, but when the book ran out, it was time to find something else to do. The idea of a Joseph Campbell… Continue reading