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In this climax to his great series of studies on world mythologies, Joseph Campbell examines a process which he sees as beginning in the mid-twelfth century in the West: an accelerating disintegration' of the orthodox tradition, which has resulted in release for the 'creative powers of a great company of towering individuals.' The natural context of traditional mythology is, he says, a stable society and accepted authority. Creative mythology, on the other hand, is the work of the rebellious, adventurous few, the 'challengers of hell'. It arises from individual experience, but if it has a certain depth and import, it can in communication reach the value and force of living myth'. Such is the function of the great creative thinkers and artists of the post-medieval period in Europe, from Galileo to Einstein, Shakespeare to Thomas Mann.

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Joseph Campbell was educated at Columbia University and the Universities of Paris and Munich. For most of his career he taught at the Sarah Lawrence College, inspiring his students with his own absorption in the mythologies of the world. Among his many influential books, Myths to Live By and volumes 1 and 2 of The Masks of God - Primitive Mythology and Oriental Mythology - are also available from Souvenir Press. Volume 3 of The Masks of God, Occidental Mythology is reissued with this one.

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