The flight of the wild gander : explorations in the mythological dimension

by Joseph Campbell

Paperback, 1990

Publication

Imprint: New York, N.Y. : HarperPerennial, 1990. Context: Originally published: New York : Viking Press, 1969. Responsibility: Joseph Campbell. Physical: Text : 1 volume : viii, 248 pages : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm. Features: Includes appendix, bibliography, glossary, index, indices, suggested reading.

Call number

Myth / Campb

Barcode

BK-06393

ISBN

006055195X / 9780060551957

Collections

Your library, Adult Materials, Root Religions

CSS Library Notes

Description: "In Flight of the Wild Gender, mythologist Joseph Campbell - in his first collection of essays, written between 1944 and 1968 - explores the individual and geographical origins of myth, outlining the full range of mythology from Grimm's fairy tales to American Indian legends." "Originally published in 1969, this collection describes the symbolic content of stories: how they are linked to human experience and how they - along with our experiences - have changed over time. Throughout, Campbell explores the function of mythology in everyday life and the forms it may take in the future."--Jacket.

Table of Contents: I: The fairy tale. The work of the Brothers Grimm --
The types of stories --
The history of the tales --
The question of meaning --
Appendix: Tale numbers and names ; Classification of tales according to type ; Classification of tales according to origin II: Bios and mythos. Sociological and psychological schools of interpretation --
The biological function of myth --
The image of a second birth --
The anxiety of the misborn III: Primitive man as metaphysician. Tender- and tough-minded thinking --
The image and its meaning --
Imagery of the manifold and its "cause" --
The "cause" understood as absolutely unknown --
Theology as a misreading of mythology --
Esoteric and exoteric anthropology IV: Mythogenesis. An American Indian legend --
The Neolithic background --
The Paleolithic background --
The psychological base --
The personal factor V: The symbol without meaning. The impact of modern science --
The mythic forms of archaic civilization --
The problem of the new symbol emergent --
The shaman and the priest --
The wild gander --
Mythologies of engagement and disengagement --
The flight between two thoughts VI: The secularization of the sacred. The tree in the garden --
Religions of identity --
Religions of relationship --
The European graft --
Eros, agape, amor --
The Western individual.

FY2013 /

Physical description

viii, 248 p.; 21 cm

Description

InFlight of the Wild Gander, renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell -- in his first collection of essays, written between 1944 and 1968 -- explores the individual and geographical origins of myth, outlining the full range of mythology from Grimm's fairy tales to American Indian legends. Originally published in 1969, this collection describes the symbolic content of stories: how they are linked to human experience and how they -- along with our experiences -- have changed over time. Throughout, Campbell explores the function of mythology in everyday life and the forms it may take in the future. Included are some of Campbell's first groundbreaking essays: "Bios and Mythos" and "Primitive Man as Metaphysician," both of which examine the biological basis and necessity for story and mythology, and establish mythology as a basic function or fact of nature. Campbell's essay "Mythogenesis" turns from the natural and biological to the cultural and historical -- the rise, flowering, and decline of a particular myth, a single American Indian legend. Campbell explores how the myth was born, as well as the personal experiences of the visionary medicine man through whose memory the myth was preserved. This new paperback edition joins other reissues and previously unpublished works as part of theCollected Works of Joseph Campbell.… (more)