Life -Joseph Campbell
Childhood and education Joseph Campbell was born and raised in White
Plains, New York in an upper middle class Roman Catholic family. As
a child, Campbell became fascinated with Native American culture after
his father took him to see the American Museum of Natural History in
New York where he saw on display featured collections of Native American
artifacts. He soon became versed in numerous aspects of Native American
society, primarily in Native American mythology. This led to Campbell's
lifelong passion for myth and to his study of and mapping of the cohesive
threads in mythology that appeared to exist among even disparate human
cultures. He graduated from the Canterbury School (Connecticut) in 1921.
While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided
that he preferred the humanities. He transferred to Columbia University
where he received his B.A. in English literature in 1925 and M.A. in
Medieval literature in 1927. Campbell was also an accomplished athlete,
receiving awards in track and field events.
Joseph Campbell Europe
In 1927, Campbell received a fellowship provided by Columbia to study
in Europe. Campbell studied Old French and Sanskrit at the University
of Paris in France and the University of Munich in Germany. He quickly
learned to read and speak both French and German, mastering them after
only a few months of rigorous study. He remained fluent in both languages
for the remainder of his life.
He was highly influenced while in Europe by the period
of the Lost Generation, a time of enormous intellectual and artistic
innovation. Campbell commented on this influence, particularly that
of James Joyce, in The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and
Work (1990, first edition:28):
CAMPBELL: And then the fact that James Joyce grabbed me.
You know that wonderful living in a realm of significant fantasy, which
is Irish, is there in the Arthurian romances; it's in Joyce; and it's
in my life. COUSINEAU: Did you find that you identified with Stephen
Daedalus...in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? CAMPBELL:
His problem was my problem, exactly...Joyce helped release me into an
understanding of the universal sense of these symbols...Joyce disengaged
himself and left the labyrinth, you might say, of Irish politics and
the church to go to London, where he became one of the very important
members of this marvelous movement that Paris represented in the period
when I was there, in the '20s. It was in this climate that Campbell
was also introduced to the work of Thomas Mann, who was to prove equally
influential upon his life and ideas. Also while in Europe, Campbell
was introduced to modern art, becoming particularly enthusiastic about
the work of Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso. A new world of exciting ideas
opened up to Campbell while studying in Europe- Here he also discovered
the works and writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. It was also during
this time, as well, that he met and became friends with the young Jiddu
Krishnamurti, a friendship which began his lifelong interest in Hindu
philosophy and mythology. In addition, after the death of Indologist
Heinrich Zimmer, Campbell was given the task to edit and posthumously
publish Zimmer's papers.
