The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimensions of Fairy Tales, Legends and Symbols - Softcover

Campbell, Joseph

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9780060964900: The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimensions of Fairy Tales, Legends and Symbols

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060964901 ISBN 13: 9780060964900

Publisher: HarperPerennial, 1990

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. 1990 light tanning to pages

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Review:

"In this book, as in his other work, Campbell displays his immense learning, drawing evidence to support his case from virtually every branch of human knowledge."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"No one in our century -- not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Levi-Strauss -- has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness."
-- James Hillman

"Campbell has become one of the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by the popular culture."
-- Newsweek

"In our generation the mythographer who has had the fullest command of the huge scholarly literature, the analytic ability, the lucid prose, and the needed staying power has been Joseph Campbell."
-- Commentary

Synopsis:

An exploration of the individual and geographic origins and the symbolic contents of myths, this book looks at the range of mythologies including Grimm's fairy tales and the native American legends. The author describes the symbols that have been used to describe human experience and shows how these symbols - and, subsequently, our myths - have been shaped and reshaped over time. He emphasizes that "myths are not to be judged as true or false, but as effective or ineffective," for they are "not invented, but occur, and are recognized by seers and poets to be cultivated and employed as catalysts of well-being".

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