The Flight of the Wild Gander, Joseph Campbell
The Flight of the Wild Gander, Joseph Campbell
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The Flight of the Wild Gander
Explorations in the Mythological Dimension - Selected Essays 1944-1968

Author: Joseph Campbell

Narrator: James Anderson Foster

Unabridged: 7 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 02/13/2018

Synopsis

In Flight 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.

About Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum’s collection of totem poles. Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and, after earning a master’s degree, continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, and A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced his views to millions of people.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nandakishore on January 02, 2019

What is the “meaning” of a tree? of a butterfly? of the birth of a child? or of the universe? What is the “meaning” of the song of a rushing stream? Such wonders simply are. They are antecedent to meaning, though “meanings” may be read into them. They are, as the Buddhists say, tathāgata, “thus come......more

Goodreads review by Mesoscope on November 27, 2009

Along with "The Mythic Image" this is the Campbell book I'd recommend to newbies, more than "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and much more than "The Masks of God". In fact, if I were asked a single book on the study of mythology and religion to any interested party, this would very likely be the one. Wh......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on June 02, 2013

A great piece. Campbell expounds upon ideas captured in his other works here, only the emphasis is on the personal experience from understanding the symbols of myth. My favorite part of the work was section five, which contains the name sake "flight of the wild gander." Throughout he weaves through......more

Goodreads review by Peggy on February 05, 2012

Barnaby Thieme's review: I read The Flight of the Wild Gander in the Seventies, and as Thieme's review might imply, it is the Campbell book I think about the most. Here Campbell seems, again, to be trying to piece together perceptions of current social evolution. I wonder if he was foreseeing the gr......more

Goodreads review by Mike on July 05, 2013

I once read somewhere (It’s probably something Campbell or Jung said but I don’t remember) that a true believer—no matter what his particular faith—is living inside the mythology of his religion, and so cannot recognize the myths for what they are, a set of symbols and rituals that must be considere......more

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