Mythic Worlds, Modern Words

Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)

By: Joseph Campbell, Edmund L. Epstein - editor and foreword

Narrated by: Braden Wright

In 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was able to visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore - the outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses, and that, Campbell attested, changed his career. For the next sixty years, Campbell moved through the labyrinths of Joyce’s creations - writing and lecturing on Joyce using depth psychology, comparative religion, anthropology, and art history as tools of analysis. Arranged by Joyce scholar Edmund L. Epstein, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words presents a wide range of Campbell’s writing and lectures on Joyce, which together form an illuminating running commentary on Joyce’s masterworks. Campbell’s visceral appreciation for all that was new in Joyce will delight the previously uninitiated, and perhaps intimidated, as well as longtime lovers of both Joyce and Campbell.

©1993, 2003 Joseph Campbell Foundation (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

The brilliance of Joyce and Campbell combined

Joyce was screamingly brilliant. But for me it's Campbell's intense study and insights (and the obvious passion he had for the material) that helped me fully appreciate what Joyce did. An unexpected look at mythology and how it works on us. And where Finnegan's Wake is tough to read, I'm amazed at the narration Braden Wright achieves with ALL the varied styles and especially Joyce's made-up language. Brilliant work! The whole thing is a big Wow and I think still manages to be ahead of its time. Love it = Love it = Love it !

too much long exerpts

Sure, it's a must-have for Joyce fans, who would jump at every bit of commentary available in audio, but for me the expiriance was somewhat disapointing: The insights are not all that mindblowing and not entirely clear, and the exerpts from the works, mostly Ulysses, are to long and for me just a bit redundant, and in any case the narrator, despite his good intentions, does not have the skills to render them in the best way. All in all I'm glad I lisented to it, but this book, and audio version could be much better.