#8 in Myths & legends
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- 416
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
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Our view
One bold idea runs through “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”: that the world’s hero myths trace a single journey. Campbell supports it with tales from many cultures, and some readers value both that range and the likenesses he finds between stories far apart. Others find the psychoanalytic reading, drawn from Freud and Jung, dated and unconvincing, and some would have preferred a summary to working through the whole book.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myths.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 137 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 48% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Myths & legends average of 8.2. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.9 | 7 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 7.8 | 130 | 95% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Hero with a Thousand Faces?
It has 416 pages — shorter than 53% of the ranked books in Myths & legends.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Myths & legends — with scores between 7.8 and 8.1, closest to this book.
