ABSTRACT
Joseph Campbell spent a lifetime studying mythological heroes in symbolic and literary traditions. In a narrower context, an understanding at Campbell's paradigm of the quest can be very valuable in understanding the typical masculine romantic protagonist in his struggles in regard to the feminine depths of his own psyche. Campbell’s delineation of the journey of the hero demonstrates how the hero’s confrontation with the goddess or the feminine principle may, to varying degrees, allow the hero to slay the dragons of solipsism and to soar beyond by means of a transformation of spirit. By creatively admitting the feminine principle into his masculine egoconsciousness, the hero of myth unites strength with humility, independence with empathy, rationality with intuition, thought with emotion. The romantic hero departs from the classical and the neoclassical heroes who concern themselves with problems of society, not with the individual.
