Mythological Studies
The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. New York: Penguin Books, 1968, reprint: 1976.
________. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin Books, 1964, reprint: 1981.
________. The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology. New York: Penguin Books, 1962, reprint: 1988.
________. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: Penguin Books, 1959, reprint: 1969.
There are, of course, numerous works on world mythologies, but I have found few to match the breadth and the synthesis of the Masks of God
series. Campbell is a master storyteller and his works are a joy to read. What he has to say about the importance of myth in contemporary life is inspiring. (SR)
________. Myths To Live By. New York: Penguin Books, 1972.
Myths to Live By contains essays based on lectures given by Campbell from 1960–1972. Campbell relates various mythologies to contemporary issues of that time. It is interesting to compare the opinions he had during the 60s with those he shared with Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth in the 80s. I would recommend that a reader start with some of Campbell's other books that describe various myth systems before tackling this one. (SR)
The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
An excellent introduction to Campbell and his work. (SR)
Comparative Mythology Baltimore, Maryland, US: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
This book has lots of interesting information, but I don't think it is arranged as usefully as it could be. From the title, I was expecting the whole book be like the last few chapters: a discussion and comparison of common themes, deities, or ideas found throughout Indo-European myths, but instead got expositions of basic myths culture by culture, starting with Vedic India and moving throughout various European cultures. While there were comparisons with the other cultures’ myths, these were not well explained within the chapters nor well cross-referenced within the book. The final chapters in which he does discuss overarching themes were much better done and more useful to the lay reader.
One hint for using this book effectively is to chart out who’s who and on what page you find him/her/it/them as you read each chapter. Many of the mythological characters and concepts had similar-looking (but often unfamiliar) names and I felt lost without a scorecard to remind me who was who. Puhvel would cite a reference to similar entity or idea in another chapter by indicating that the information could be found in “chapter x.” Rather than having the reader skim through a whole chapter to find the reference, it would have been more helpful and less disruptive to have referred the reader to the specific page or pages the cross-referenced material could be found.
Also, Puhvel had the tendency to have lengthy parenthetical digressions of the linguistic origin and development of various names and terms. Although these would be very helpful to someone with a linguistic background, they really belonged in footnotes or end notes and not embedded into the main text.
In a nutshell, lots of interesting information that is relatively difficult to access by the lay reader. (SR)
