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The Heroine with 1001 Faces

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The Heroine with 1001 Faces

By: Maria Tatar
Narrated by: Julie McKay
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About this listen

World-renowned folklorist Maria Tatar reveals an astonishing but long buried history of heroines, taking us from Cassandra and Scheherazade to Nancy Drew and Wonder Woman.

How do we explain our newfound cultural investment in empathy and social justice? For decades, Joseph Campbell had defined our cultural aspirations in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, emphasizing the value of seeking glory and earning immortality. His work became the playbook for Hollywood, with its many male-centric quest narratives.

Challenging the models in Campbell's canonical work, Maria Tatar explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on social missions. Using the domestic arts and storytelling skills, they have displayed audacity, curiosity, and care as they struggled to survive and change the reigning culture. Animating figures from Ovid's Philomela, her tongue severed yet still weaving a tale about sexual assault, to Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, a high-tech wizard seeking justice for victims of a serial killer, The Heroine with 1,001 Faces creates a luminous arc that takes us from ancient times to the present.

©2021 Maria Tatar (P)2021 Tantor Gender Studies Social Sciences
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To start off the narrator was excruciating to listen too and disjointed. I thought it was a computerised voice like those that you find on a GPS. I persevered however for the whole 12 hours.

Maria's research was excellent. You could see the passion, dedication and diligence in her work. However, she failed to pull it all together, I didn't quite understand what was the point that she was trying to make other than Joseph Campbell said that women't weren't the heroines just the supporting parts?

She shared many fairy tales, myths and stories. And? She didn't really pull it together to drive home the point and conclusion of each example. Perhaps I may be a simpleton and missed the overarching purpose, but despite the amazing reviews and great effort on the author's part, it's not a book I would listen to again. Perhaps in written form it comes across better.

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