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The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell

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The Hero with a Thousand Faces

By: Joseph Campbell
Narrated by: Arthur Morey, John Lee, Susan Denaker
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About this listen

Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In this book, Campbell outlines the Hero's Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world's mythic traditions. He also explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world creation and destruction.

As relevant today as when it was first published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to find new audiences in fields ranging from religion and anthropology to literature and film studies. The book has also profoundly influenced creative artists - including authors, songwriters, game designers, and filmmakers - and continues to inspire all those interested in the inherent human need to tell stories.

©2008 The Joseph Campbell Foundation (jcf.org). Third edition (with revisions) / 1968 by Princeton University Press. Second edition (with revisions) / 1949 by Bollingen Foundation and published by Pantheon Books. (Original edition), year 2008 (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Customs & Traditions Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Psychology & Interactions Social Sciences Sociology Tradition Mythology Ancient History Classics Comparative Mythology

Critic Reviews

"Arthur Morey, John Lee, and Susan Denaker are an adept and experienced performance team. The way they trade voices adds texture to the complex compendium of stories." ( AudioFile)
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His classic work, a constellation of widespread human value, with the constant undertone of bringing people together and encouraging intercultural understanding and empathy. He was a unique thinker and the world is better off.

Campbell Walks through Worlds

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a lot more academic than i was expecting. still very thorough breakdown of the subject. I enjoyed it because I have an interest but I found his lectures to be more engaging.

not what I was expecting but still interesting

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Great book on the structure of stories. It's written in the dense style of the early 20th century so it can be needlessly wordy in parts but it's worth the slog.

Every writer should read this.

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Supreme pacing, structure of what could have been difficult to communicate content. The narrative flows perfectly; just as The Hero’s Awakening does also.

Masterful

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There needs to be an effort to edit this book so that it can be more easily understood in an audio format. For example, how do you translate italics into audio? With a text like this, much of the meaning-values are expressed in layout, the use of headings, and nuanced written convention. These sorts of writing elements do not translate well into audio. It makes understanding the text far more difficult. There is no explanation, for example, as to why there are different narrators or why the narration is changing. The text just suddenly veers or lurches to a different narrator and there seems little logical reason given to the reader as to why this is occurring. It makes it difficult to follow. This is a shame because there is so much wonderful writing in this book. There are brilliant ideas and observations that can only be teased out through a careful and concerted reading of the clumsy production. The work of Joseph Campbell needs to be made more accessible and more widely known. This text may have begun with a sincere effort to achieve this aim, but it has failed because of generally hackneyed production values.

Doesn’t translate into audio as you’d expect.

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As a Star Wars fan, I have had this book on my TBR for a long time, so when my book club voted for this to be our book, I was very excited.

Wow, this book is timing with a lifetime of collecting and treading together the mythologies and belief systems of this world. It was a great book for me, someone who doesn't know a lot about mythologies.

There is so much to take in, and so I think I will probably have to reread it at some point.

My brain is happy/tired.

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Thank god, source, the cosmos for manifesting this man. And for his courage to cut his own path through the Amazon of life. what a hero.

Grateful

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If you want to develop a greater understanding of human nature and the history of the world then this is definitely the book for you but be warned as it’s not for the feint of heart as it’s very deep, incredibly profound & full of meaning, there is nothing superficial here. Highly recommended. 👍🏼👍🏼 #LifeChanging

AHHH...MAZ...ING!!!!

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source material is out of this world good but the choice of narrators is very odd, the primary has a raspy voice and flat tone which is not engaging at all and the secondary man and woman both spoke as if they were performing shakespear 200 years ago, which is distracting and not conducive to learning or enjoyment.

professional but badly cast narrators

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I waded in with great gusto, and enjoyed it at the beginning, but soon had to wade out again, bored, bewildered and unedified. I'm sure some folks will find it interesting, but I just found myself in a wilderness of endless analytical psycho-talk. I was hoping for an exciting explanation of the archeptypes and different examples of the hero's journey and what they mean - and maybe these things are in there somewhere - but I haven't got the wherewithal to drag through the babble to find it. I'm returning this book.

tedious gobbledegook

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