ABSTRACT
Joseph Campbell draws on European and Middle Eastern roots, ancient, medieval, and modem, as well as on religious systems of the Far East, of Africa, and of the Native Americans. In dealing with Campbell’s mythic vision, it is necessary, to be true to the spirit of that vision, to take into account the various roots of the vision. Campbell’s “mythic vision” grew out of his earliest studies of Native American mythology as a schoolboy and his early reading as a graduate student in New York, Paris, and Munich in the work of the new depth psychologists and in the major modem writers. From 1972 onward his new mythic vision would rely more heavily than ever on great American writers. That Campbell continued all his life to draw from American authors can be seen in his continuing praise of certain figures of this nation’s literature.
