Editor’s note : Our regular contributor, Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., who teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute, one of Mythic Imagination Institute’s sponsors, for this issue has recommended the following article written by one of his students, Steven D. Callow, who lives in San Francisco. For those persons who read the works of Joseph Campbell, especially The Hero With a Thousand Faces , Callow here discusses Joseph Campbell’s rhetoric, his ideas, and his writing techniques. Additional notes and works cited are available upon request. Enjoy!

"Tricked to Righteousness" : The Rhetorical Devices of Joseph Campbell
by Steven D. Callow

To varying degrees, both scholars and dilettantes understand what Joseph Campbell has to tell us in his writing, but not many seem to have given much thought about how Joseph Campbell tells us what it is he has to say. How does he make use of the written word to engage and to convince his reader? Are specific traditional rhetorical techniques to be discerned in his writing? If so, are they to be taken positively as eloquent and persuasive uses of language, or are they to be assessed pejoratively as bombastic or disingenuous efforts at manipulation? Campbell's first extended exploration of themes that would occupy him for the next nearly forty years, The Hero With a Thousand Faces , is probably the best book from which to evaluate the rhetoric of the writing. In particular, for the sake of manageability and focus, this paper will examine two sections of this book, its opening statement and its closing summary: (i) the first four paragraphs of the "Prologue" (3-4) and (ii) the "Epilogue," comprising the final eleven pages of the book (381-391).

Hero opens with a flourish; the opening nine-line paragraph is but one sentence, a series of dependent and independent clauses coming at the reader from every direction. Allusions are global in their compass--Africa, China, Europe, North America--and just short of flippant. With jaunty descriptions such as "aloof amusement," "dreamlike mumbo jumbo," "red-eyed witch doctor," and "bizarre" fairy tale, Campbell secures the reader's attention. With collaborating suggestions to the reader that we "read with cultivated rapture" or that we "catch suddenly the shining meaning," Campbell launches his overture and summarizes the main theme of his book: "it will be always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find" (3). In short order, by means of enumeration and good-humored engagement, Campbell simultaneously causes a stir, grabs the reader's attention, and declares his topic.

In the next paragraph, Campbell ups the ante. After positing in the first paragraph that his theme encompasses a global phenomenon, he then expands the context by proclaiming that "the myths of man" are a link between humankind and the cosmos, and not just any link, but rather, the "secret opening" (3). This paragraph has an amazed, "Can you top this?" tone to it that is accentuated by its juxtaposition with the first paragraph. The tone also shifts from one of congenial wonder to that of near boasting. Myths "have been the living inspiration" for everything else, and Campbell modestly crows that "[i]t would not be too much to say" that myths connect us with our cosmology.

In both paragraphs, Campbell's word choice is poetic rather than formalistic, making use of fresh descriptors and modifiers; his syntax is varied and rhythmic. In two relatively short, winsome paragraphs Campbell overwhelms his reader, and he does this with his prose. If one of the exclusive designs of rhetoric is to impress assertively, the opening two paragraphs of Hero achieve Campbell's desired result.

When it seems that Campbell cannot possibly portray myth as anything more prodigious than he has described in the first two paragraphs, he actually increases its sense of sweep in the next paragraph by turning his analogies to the microscopic. After having taken the reader to the outer reaches of the unknown cosmos, Campbell spins the reader around as he drills down into the infinitesimal with his successive similes conveying his contention that the extensiveness of myth is demonstrated by its being found within the egg of a flea or a drop of water within the ocean (4). This, then, sets up the reader for the final inward step, which is into the inner cosmos of the psyche.

This roundabout poetic tour de force that takes the reader across the globe, to the outer void of the universe, and finally to the inner depths of the universal psyche comes to its close with a rhetorical flourish to the overture comprising four questions: (1) What is the secret? (2) From where does it derive? (3) Why is it to be found everywhere? (4) What does it all mean to us? Therefore, in four short paragraphs, thirty fully-charged lines, Campbell teases and tantalizes the reader with swift-moving, poetic prose that leads one to confront the "big" ontological questions on his terms. "Rhetoric may be defined," Aristotle tells us, "as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (I. 2. 26-28). While we can never know if these words were in Campbell's mind when he wrote the "Prologue" to Hero , it is indisputable that his writing comports with Aristotle's guidelines for inducement.

Three hundred seventy-seven pages later, the reader arrives at the first page of the "Epilogue" to Campbell's Hero . Certainly, per definition, the "Epilogue" is a brief recapitulation and conclusion of sorts, but the reader expects more of Campbell; the reader expects substance and style, substance of style.

The eleven pages of the "Epilogue" are divided into three parts, of three, eleven, and eleven paragraphs, respectively. By moving slowly and progressively through this final section of Hero , one cannot help but be impressed, and persuaded that Campbell knew precisely how he wanted to tell his story.

Part 1. Paragraph 1. A blunt, declarative, negative statement opens the "Epilogue," which is curious given the fact that it at first seems to be a negation of the entire book preceding it. Campbell has our attention. However, if one slows down and carefully parses his words, it becomes clear that Campbell qualifies his denial of a system for interpreting myth by stating that no "final," no single and definitive, system of interpretation is to be found. By sleight of hand, he turns the reader's head, but not so far as at first seemed, and his concluding remarks are ready to launch as a result of a sublime twist. In the next sentence, Campbell sets up the remainder of this first section--"The Shapeshifter"--by shifting the definition of mythology into a simile, but not just any handy simile. Campbell bends the definition into a Möbius strip-like tautology by defining mythology as a myth, the polymorphous god Proteus.

Part 1. Paragraph 2. This paragraph is an explication of the myth-as-myth, myth-as-Proteus simile, but as is explained, "this wily god never discloses even to the skillful questioner the whole content of his wisdom" (381). So, myth is like Proteus, and Proteus is Campbell, and by extension, Campbell's work is meant to take on somewhat mythic proportions, too. Like Proteus, the wily Campbell is not going to disclose all of his wisdom; he does not "disdain to reply" (382), but the reader is left to infer that his might actually be intended as something close to the final word on the subject.

Part 1. Paragraph 3. Segueing from the pantheon of the gods to the pantheon of "modern intellect" (382), Campbell brings to a close this brief first section of his "Epilogue." To date, the best and the brightest have offered their thoughts about mythology, and Campbell courteously concludes that "[m]ythology is all of these [interpretations]" (382). By means of the rhetorical device of association, albeit implied, the not-so-young Campbell lifts himself as a thinker and scholar into the group containing such luminaries as Frazer, Müller, Durkheim, Jung, Coomaraswamy, and even the collective Christian Church. In addition, he simultaneously allows the reader to think that he might have something to offer that takes us beyond the admirable but limited interpretations of prior "modern intellect."

In virtually all of his books, Campbell sub-divides his chapters into sections, and the "Epilogue" in Hero is no exception. The opening section of Campbell's "Epilogue" serves as a coda to the broad-stroke pronouncements at the beginning of his "Prologue." Throughout Hero, Campbell tries to build his case, to persuade the reader that he has derived and developed a new and significant approach to the study of mythology. As Aristotle tells us, a "statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so" (I. 2. 26-28). By having the temerity to interpret myth, Campbell has to collect information that seems to be self-evident, but arguably may or may not be so. We know from his "Prologue" that Campbell wants to deal with universals, but universals that are not self-evident. Indeed, there is much subjectivity, even mystery, to that which Campbell wants to tackle. Campbell likely would have agreed with Wittgenstein's comment in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus : "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical" (6.522).

Part 2. Paragraphs 1-3. Campbell turns somewhat instructional, but not overly so, in the second section of his "Epilogue." His subject matter--man vs. mankind--has been manageably narrowed since he has a concluding point that he wants to make before he brings his book to a close. His distinctive style of writing remains, however: his cadence is quasi-poetic as he strings together series of words or phrases that require pleasing rhythmic variations; he varies the length of his sentences and independent clauses, keeping the reader alert with occasional turns or sudden stops; and he seems intentionally to avoid appearing pedantic or the traditional scholar to his reader. It is interesting to note, for example, that there are but three footnotes in the "Epilogue": the first two to provide the lines for the quotation from Homer's Odyssey, and the other for those lines quoted in Nietzche's Thus Spake Zarathustra . Campbell finds no need for "scholarly" references to assist him with his concluding remarks.

It seems that most rhetoricians have agreed with Aristotle's distinction of three kinds of rhetoric: deliberative, forensic, and epideictic. Moreover, it seems that Campbell in particular makes use of the former and the latter in a two-step fashion throughout his work. Deliberative rhetoric, which "attempts to make the future," is first thought of in the context of politics, but it applies to Hero as well. Affecting the way the audience perceives the future is the aim both of every politician and of Joseph Campbell. While forensic rhetoric is commonly relegated to law courts, and not applicable here, epideictic rhetoric, which "attempts to reshape views of the present," is a clear aim of Campbell's work. By means of his instruction and almost incantatory prose, Campbell encourages his readers to allow the stories, the rituals, the traditions, and the gods of the past to seep into the present--without predetermination and without positivist expectations. He wants his readers to learn from his books how to become "shapeshifters," how to reform their present ways of perception in order to bring about, almost by default, a deliberative change in our collective future.

Part 2. Paragraph 4. The mechanics of rhetoric, the means by which to impose present changes of attitude and perception and, thereby, affect future ways of being in the world, mirror Campbell's theme in this section of his "Epilogue." By means of ritual, individuals change their way of seeing themselves solely or primarily and, instead, see themselves as part of something greater; their present worldview morphs in order to allow their future to unfold more fully, enabling one to "bring about a sense of identity with the transcendent"

Part 2. Paragraphs 5-7. Campbell asserts that rituals are not an attempt to control nature, as has been the "customary" interpretation of his predecessors (384). Obviously unable to essay a definitive proof of such a proclamation, Campbell unsheathes his favorite rhetorical weapons of persuasion: repetition and amplification. In paragraph 5, he lists types of rituals that can be misinterpreted as efforts by man to assert control; he does this in order to sweep them all at once away. Paragraphs 6 and 7 simply, yet effectively, provide additional reinforcement as the repetition of the seasonal tribal rites listed (¶ 6) and the parallelism of the American clans (¶ 7) apparently serve as enough examples (or presumably Campbell would have provided more) to "prove" Campbell's assertion.

Part 2. Paragraph 8 is close to serving as a door-to-door salesman's pitch ("But there is another way"!) by startling the reader into paying especially close attention. Campbell then moves his argument forward from the preceding paragraphs by means of point-counter-point, and closes with the embellishment of two "big" rhetorical questions.

Part 2. Paragraph 9. Campbell is now ready to wind up Section 2 of his "Epilogue." He tells us that certain aspects of the ancient philosophies of the West and of the East have given us the "techniques for the shifting of the emphasis of individual consciousness away from the garments" (385). Making use of the animating force of this metonymic device, he heads for home. The Eastern and Western "techniques" allow us to see all that we are not, Campbell tells us, and then, somewhat surprisingly, but also effectively, he turns to a colloquial tone (and I am sure he delights in this as it turns his prose into the words of the storyteller, a role he seems to have relished). Midway through the paragraph, he employs the device of a supposed quotation, which is meant to represent the articulated "meditations" of all right-meditating individuals. He provides us with his list (Campbell is always providing us with lists) of attributes as exemplum of that which we are not, and then he winds up his storytelling by introducing the figurative "Mr. So-and-so" from the town of "Such-and-such." The fifteenth century Everyman has been brought forward in time and redefined by Joseph Campbell.

Part 2. Paragraphs 10-11. Campbell returns to myth to conclude this middle section of his "Epilogue." He refers in particular to Narcissus and the Buddha, suggesting them as analogies for the "hero" he has been describing: "The individual [who has] been reborn in identity with the whole meaning of the universe" (386). Some might take this as bombast or hyperbole, but that would be a mistake. Campbell's words and their rhetorical methods of conveyance were carefully and purposefully determined.

Part 3 of the "Epilogue" itself sorts roughly into three parts, opening through the first three paragraphs with Campbell's use of juxtaposition to convey a false sense of modern day accomplishment; pivoting in Paragraph 4 with the recapitulating statement of the primary message to be conveyed by Hero ; and, with Paragraphs 5-11, he brings his discourse to its close.

The opening sentence of Part 3 refers directly back to the close of Part 2 and serves as a bridge to allow for the progress of Campbell's conclusion, juxtaposing contemporary views of "the All in the individual" with those of the too-much-forgotten past (386-387). He teases us a bit in the first paragraph by describing the contemporary changes in ostensibly positive terms. The "hero-cycle of the modern age" is said to be a breaking of the "spell of the past," the "bondage of tradition"; this was all "shattered with sure and mighty strokes"; modern man has emerged "like a butterfly from its cocoon" from "ancient ignorance" (387). These comments, in all of their seeming glory, should be suspicious to the reader because Campbell presages them with Nietzsche's quote from Zarathustra announcing the death of all the gods (387).

Campbell begins to turn his argument in the next two Paragraphs (2 & 3) by more fully describing modern man's condition now that the "dream-web of myth" has fallen away. He details just what the modern age is "not," and drives this point with a near-anaphoric use of negative terms (e.g., "not" and "no" are each used three times in Paragraph 2). This negative swing sets up the statement of the "problem" in Paragraph 3: modern day humankind has lost conscious connection with its unifying mythic meanings, and most isolated individuals (with Campbell one of the exceptions) do not know what to do about this inverted state of affairs.

"Where then there was darkness, now there is light, but also, where light was, there now is darkness. The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated soul" (388, ¶ 4). This short, declamatory paragraph can be read as a summary statement for Hero ; its message and its poetic prose capture and distill the what and how of Campbell's writing. It is loaded with rhetorical devices (climax, apostrophe, metaphor, parataxis, personification) and it persuades us of the earnestness of Campbell's concern,

Part 3. Paragraphs 5-11. Campbell now seems ready to be direct with the reader, to state the problem and to advise how to proceed. The aim of his peroration is that of rendering "the modern world spiritually significant [. . .] making it possible for men and women to come to full human maturity through the conditions of contemporary life" (388, ¶ 5), and, in his efforts to accomplish this, his rhetorical structure adheres to Aristotle's directions: (1) he has tried to persuade his reader to be "well-disposed towards [him] and ill-disposed towards [any opposing argument]," (2) he has tried to "magnify or minimize the leading facts," (3) he has tried to "excite the required state of emotion in [his readers]," and (4) he has tried to "refresh [the readers'] memories" (Rhetoric , III. 18. 10-14). Campbell's concluding remarks, indeed his approach to writing in general, exhibit his efforts to persuade his reader to be "well-disposed," and I believe that consistent and overwhelming evidence exists throughout Hero that this engaging, poetic Irish story-teller-turned-scholar succeeds at this. His choices of fresh words and captivating sentence structure serve well to "magnify or minimize" the facts that he decides to bring to bear, and his writing is replete with emotion--gradually building or in outbursts--that proves to "excite" any sympathetic reader.

In order to effect today's "hero-deed," one cannot turn back, or away from, modern accomplishments (¶ 5); today's world religions, as they are presently understood, cannot help (¶ 6), and our modern-day consciousness cannot provide us with the necessary tools (¶ 7). What Campbell has concluded as being available to us, albeit it enthymematically, is the ubiquitous appearance of "identical" symbols, and, given that, the "way to become human is to learn to recognize the lineaments of God in all of the wonderful modulations of the face of man" (¶ 8). One could expect the book to end here with this powerful meronym, but it is as if Campbell cannot control himself; he wants one more bold rhetorical gesture.

Paragraphs 9 and 10 are chock-full of rhetorical devices that we have seen before (analogy, serial examples, meronym, metaphor, simile), and all lead to the restatement of his conclusion, that man "is the alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in whose image society is to be reformed" (391). The book concludes with the rousing oratorical summons to the reader to dare to take up the challenge to become the modern hero.

Kenneth Burke admits that "the cataloguing of rhetorical devices [has been] carried to extreme lengths. You can't possibly make a statement without its falling into some sort of pattern. [. . .] Given enough industry in observation, abstraction, and classification, you can reduce any expression (even inconsequential or incomplete ones) to some underlying skeletal structure" (65). Perhaps this admonition can be applied to the writing of Joseph Campbell, in part because Campbell quite clearly loved to write, but it would be an unfortunate error in judgment if one were to underestimate the substance of his writing, both the "what" and the "how." All writing is hard work for the writer, but it can be made fun (for both reader and writer), too. It can become a means by which to enlighten as well as to entertain; it can convey enlightenment by means of a pageant of literary devices that entertain. Just re-read Joseph Campbell, and you will see for yourself.

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