Flight of the Wild Gander

In Flight of the Wild Gander, renowned mythologist Joseph Campbellin his first collection of essays, written between 1944 and 1968explores the individual and geographical origins of myth, outlining the full range of mythology from Grimms fairy tales to American Indian legends. Originally published in 1969, this collection describes the symbolic content of stories: how they are linked to human experience and how theyalong with our experienceshave changed over time. Throughout, Campbell explores the function of mythology in everyday life and the forms it may take in the future.Included are some of Campbells first groundbreaking essays: Bios and Mythos and Primitive Man as Metaphysician, both of which examine the biological basis and necessity for story and mythology, and establish mythology as a basic function or fact of nature. Campbells essay Mythogenesis turns from the natural and biological to the cultural and historicalthe rise, flowering, and decline of a particular myth, a single American Indian legend. Campbell explores how the myth was born, as well as the personal experiences of the visionary medicine man through whose memory the myth was preserved.