The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a nonfiction work about world mythology published in 1949. Campbell, a mythology scholar and professor of literature, presents his theory of the “monomyth,” or the narrative tropes common to all storytelling traditions. The first half of the book covers the monomyth of the hero’s journey. The second half deals with similarities among a wide range of creation myths.

In his Prologue, Campbell considers why people from all geographical regions, time periods, and cultural traditions tell such similar stories. He views the monomyth as the product of the human psyche, which is encoded with Oedipal impulses and infant fears that are the subject of contemporary psychoanalytic study. Campbell draws connections between modern dreams and ancient myths, which share a common symbology and represent the insistent meaning-making of the human mind. The Prologue also begins exploring the spectrum of tragedy and comedy in myth, the role of heroes and gods, and the ultimate source of power in the universe as represented in myth, which Campbell calls “The World Navel” (40).

Part 1 traces the path of the hero’s journey, a narrative framework Campbell finds throughout mythology.