By Ethan Maurice | November 19, 2020
Joseph Campbell is one of my greatest heroes. His words ring with deep truth in me and my life has been greatly inspired by his.
What so inspires me about Joe is not that he uncovered and popularized the psychologically powerful, universally mythologized cycle of “the hero’s journey,” but that he did so by walking the hero path himself. His ideas are the foundation upon which our modern myths, movies like Star Wars and The Matrix, were deliberately built. His posthumously released six-part PBS interview series with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, remains “one of the most popular series in the history of public television.” The interviews from that series were filled with such deep insight and wisdom that their transcripts were simply printed into one of my all-time favorite books.
As Joseph Campbell’s influence so powerfully poured through our culture, I one day wondered, what particular influences so powerfully poured through him? A few Google searches lead me to the Sarah Lawrence Introduction to Mythology Class Reading List he handed out for thirty-some-odd years, a list not meant to be read in a semester but across a lifetime. Almost unconsciously, I have again and again returned for more reading recommendations. Upon my most recent return I thought, “why haven’t I shared this potent well in which I keep returning to dip?”
So here it is — Joseph Campbell’s recommended reading list — the books that most influenced his influence. Pick one up that stands out, or if you’re wondering why someone would read so many books, grab a copy of The Power of Myth and experience what all that reading amounted to in him.
Joseph Campbell’s Sarah Lawrence Intro to Mythology Class Reading List
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim (Translated by Karen E. Fields)
How Natives Think by Lucien Levy-Bruhl (Translated by Lilian A. Clare)
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (Translated by James Strachey)
Three Contributions to a Theory of Sex by Sigmund Freud (Translated by A.A. Brill)
Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud (Translated by Katherine A. Jones)
Integration of the Personality by Carl Gustav Jung (Translated by Stanley M. Dell)
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life (Translated by Richard Wilhelm)
The Dance of Siva by Ananda Coomaraswamy (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co. 1924 Reprint)
Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel (Translated by R. F. C. Hull)
The Canon of Reason and Virtue (Tao Te Ching) by Lao-Tze (Translated by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus)
The Great Digest and Unwobbling Pivot by Confucius (Translated by Ezra Pound).
They Wrote in Clay: The Babylonian Tablets Speak by Edward Chiera
The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Translated by Walter Kaufmann)
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (Translated by James Scully and C. J.
Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles (Translated by Luci Berkowitz and Theodore F. Brunner)
The Portable Arabian Nights (Translated by Joseph Campbell and John Payne)
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur)
Stories of Three Decades by Thomas Mann (Specifically Tonio Kröger, translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter)
Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians by Morris Edward Opler
Legends of Maui and Tahaki by John Stimson (can’t seem to find a copy)
*Joseph Campbell studied Russian just to read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the vernacular. Understanding this, I’ve taken great care to find and link his recommended translation of each book above.
**Some of the above links are Amazon affiliate links. If you click a link and buy a book, I will receive a small percentage of its price.