The Mythic Image

Rating:
Summary: Joe Campbell at his best!
Review: One of the last projects he worked on, this beautifully illustrated book puts together Campbell's views on myth as manafested through art. This could be his very best achievement as a "comparative mythologist." Organized around the theam of the world-as-dream (from Hinduism to *Finnagan's Wake*), it discusses several universal motifs in art/myth (the virgin birth, the world axis, the death and resurection of the hero...) and gives Campbell's explainatons for for their commonality. Manny of the artworks discussed in his audio tape lectures are shown and analyzed here. I am an art educator, and I've found that I can build almost my whole (multicultural) curiculum around this book.