Interview

Joseph Campbell

The Hero’s Adventure

Bill Moyers of PBS conducted a series of interviews with Joseph Campbell. The interview embedded below was initially aired as a PBS series, The Power of Myth, and later published in video and transcript form. Moyers is a journalist who served as White House press secretary for the Johnson administration. Campbell (1904–87) was a world-renowned scholar of comparative mythology. His theory of the Hero’s Cycle, which states that most mythical narratives center on a hero who goes through a journey that includes certain stages (such as “call to adventure,” challenges and temptations, and atonement), heavily influenced many modern thinkers, perhaps most notably filmmaker George Lucas, who modeled his Star Wars films on the philosophy. Images and text: © 2012 fangirlblog.com.

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