Mythic worlds, modern words : Joseph Campbell on the art of James Joyce

Joseph Campbell was 23, in Paris, in 1927. A scholar with a post-graduate fellowship, he encountered James Joyces Ulysses, known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the US in 1920). As others had been, Campbell was a tad confused. Since he was in Paris he could visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses and that, Campbell attested, changed his career. In his wide-ranging, allusive style, Joyce provided ample room for Campbells equally diverse interests in depth psychology, comparative religion, anthropology, and even art history. This work allows readers to experience Joyce from Campbells extraordinary perspective. Readers share Campbells visceral appreciation for all that was new in Joyce in a way that will delight the previously uninitiated, and perhaps intimidated, as well as longtime lovers of both Joyce and Campbell.