Western Quest: Joseph Campbell Audio Collection [Audiobook, Unabridged]

JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-1987) was a prolific writer, dedicated editor, beloved teacher, inspiring lecturer, gifted storyteller, avid scholar, and a foremost interpreter of myth. Among the many books he wrote and edited, he is best known for The Hero with a Thousand Faces, his four-volume The Masks of God, and his magnum opus, Historical Atlas of World Mythology.

From the work that brought him to national prominence to the key lectures he kept in his own study, this volume is an important piece of The Joseph Campbell Audio Collection and presents listeners with his timeless wisdom, provocative insights, and terrific stories.

With the unbelievable success of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code, the good old Holy Grail has been catapulted into the minds and imaginations of readers worldwide. That book, an easily accessible novelization of the theories put forth in Baigent & Leigh's 1981 book Holy Blood Holy Grail, has spread wide that book's contention that the Grail is actually a sacred bloodline guarded by a secret society that has existed through the ages since Medieval times, the "Priory of Sion." That theory has been subsequently debunked as an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a strange Frenchman. Still, the theory has been given new life due to Brown, and has perked the antennae of millions who may now look at vast stretches of European history with a curious and conspiratorial eye.

But what was the Holy Grail all about, anyways? Joseph Campbell, with loving affection, breaks down the symbology of the Grail Legends and places them masterfully in context in this series of delightful audio lectures. He focuses on the penultimate version of the Grail Legend, Wolfram Von Esenbach's Parzifal. Not obsessing over the actual meaning of the Grail itself (after all it is only a symbol, and Joseph Cambell fans know well that taking a mythic symbol as a historical fact is the worst possible interpretation of a mythic symbol); rather he focuses on the fascinating milieu of the time that generated these works, the period from 1150 to 1250 AD.

Campbell has such fun delivering these lectures (specifically Volumes 3-5), that his enthusiasm and delight cannot help but infect the listener, and you will most assuredly be rapt as he tells Parzifal's story. If you get the cassette version of this series, be sure to digitize it to a CD or something because I guarantee you'll be listening to these lectures over and over again, wearing out your tapes!

To summarize, anyone truly interested in the Grail Legends would do themselves a great service by listening to these lectures. Also, Joseph Cambell fans will get to see a wonderful side of the man himself, as he derives such obvious joy telling this story, a side often touched on when seen on TV or heard in his many lectures, but presented in such a full-throttle mode here it will guarantee to put a smile on your face and add to your appreciation of this brilliant and gifted genius.