The Flight of the Wild Gander

Last updated
The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension
TheFlightOfTheWildGander.jpg
Cover of the first edition
Author Joseph Campbell
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Series Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
Subject Anthropology/Comparative Mythology
Publisher New World Library
Publication date
First published in 1969. Second edition, 1990. Third edition 2002.
Media typePrint
Pages192
ISBN 1-57731-210-4
OCLC 49249456
291.1/3 21
LC Class BL304 .C35 2002

The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension is a 1969 book by mythologist Joseph Campbell, in which he collects a number of his early essays and forwards. Essays include "Bios and Mythos" (on the psycho-biological sources of mythic forms and symbols), "Mythogenesis" (on the rise and fall of a single Native American legend) and "The Symbol without Meaning" (about the secularization of myths in the modern age).

The wild gander of the title is a reference to the Hindu concept of the paramahamsa, a great spiritual teacher of exalted illumination, able to transcend the mundane, just as the hamsa is able to fly above the sky-scraping Himalayas.

Published originally in 1969 by Viking Press, the book was rereleased by Harper and Row in 1990. The third edition was published by New World Library in 2002, making The Flight of the Wild Gander the third title in the Joseph Campbell Foundation's Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. B. White</span> American writer (1899–1985)

Elwyn Brooks White was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte's Web came in first in their poll of the top one hundred children's novels. In addition, he was a writer and contributing editor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English-language style guide The Elements of Style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Campbell</span> American mythologist, writer and lecturer (1904–1987)

Joseph John Campbell was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thornton Wilder</span> American playwright and novelist (1897–1975)

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramsey Campbell</span> English author

Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Baldwin</span> American writer (1924–1987)

James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist. He garnered acclaim for his work across several forms, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was published in 1953; decades later, Time magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005. His first essay collection, Notes of a Native Son, was published in 1955.

<i>The Hero with a Thousand Faces</i> 1949 book on comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Oppen</span> American poet

George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to poetry—and to the United States—in 1958, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arrow Air Flight 1285R</span> 1985 plane crash in Newfoundland, Canada

Arrow Air Flight 1285R was an international charter flight carrying U.S. Army personnel from Cairo, Egypt, to their home base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, via Cologne, West Germany, and Gander, Newfoundland. On the morning of Thursday, 12 December 1985, shortly after takeoff from Gander en route to Fort Campbell, the McDonnell Douglas DC-8 serving the flight stalled, crashed, and burned about half a mile from the runway, killing all 248 passengers and 8 crew members on board. As of 2023, it is the deadliest aviation accident to occur on Canadian soil. At the time of the crash, it was the deadliest aviation accident involving a DC-8; as of 2023, it is the second-deadliest, behind the crash of Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 nearly six years later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gander International Airport</span> Airport in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Gander International Airport is located in Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and is operated by the Gander International Airport Authority. Canadian Forces Base Gander shares the airfield but is a separate entity from the airport. The airport is sometimes referred to as the "Crossroads of the World", and is classified as an international airport by Transport Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Everyman's Library</span> Reprint series of Random House

Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon. It is currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent, who continue to publish Everyman Paperbacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forrest Gander</span> Poet, essayist, novelist, critic, translator

Forrest Gander is an American poet, translator, essayist, and novelist. The A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University, Gander won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2019 for Be With and is chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Hamilton</span> American writer of childrens books (1936–2002)

Virginia Esther Hamilton was an American children's books author. She wrote 41 books, including M. C. Higgins, the Great (1974), for which she won the U.S. National Book Award in category Children's Books and the Newbery Medal in 1975.

<i>The Heros Journey</i> (book) Biography of mythologist Joseph Campbell

The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work is a biography of the mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987). In the form of a series of conversations, the book was drawn from the film, The Hero's Journey: A Biographical Portrait

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Jenkins</span> Anglo-Welsh poet

Nigel Jenkins was an Anglo-Welsh poet. He was an editor, journalist, psychogeographer, broadcaster and writer of creative non-fiction, as well as being a lecturer at Swansea University and director of the creative writing programme there.

<i>The Inner Reaches of Outer Space</i> 1986 book by Joseph Campbell

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space is a 1986 book by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the last book completed before his death in 1987. In it, he explores the intersections of art, psychology and religion, and discusses the ways in which new myths are born. In writing the book, Campbell drew on transcripts of a series of lectures and conversations that he gave in San Francisco between 1981 and 1984, including legendary symposiums with astronaut Rusty Schweickart and with members of the Grateful Dead.

This is a bibliography of the works of Michael Moorcock.

"My Lagan Love" is a song to a traditional Irish air collected in 1903 in northern County Donegal.

<i>In Search of Wonder</i>

In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction is a collection of critical essays by American writer Damon Knight. Most of the material in the original version of the book was originally published between 1952 and 1955 in various science fiction magazines including Infinity Science Fiction, Original SF Stories, and Future SF. The essays were highly influential, and contributed to Knight's stature as the foremost critic of science fiction of his generation. The book also constitutes an informal record of the "Boom Years" of science fiction from 1950-1955.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mezine</span> Archaeological site in Ukraine

Mezine is a place within the modern country of Ukraine which has the most artifact finds of Paleolithic culture origin. The Epigravettian site is located on a bank of the Desna River in Novhorod-Siverskyi Raion of Chernihiv Oblast, northern Ukraine, near the village of Mezine. The settlement is best known for an archaeological find of a set of bracelets engraved with marks possibly representing calendar lunar-cycles. Also found near Mezine was the earliest known example of a swastika-like form, as part of a decorative object dated to 10,000 BCE. It was described as an object carved from ivory mammoth tusks to resemble an:

Ice age Bird ... with Inscribed Swastikas...

Josip "Jozo" Tomasevich was an American economist and historian who was a leading expert on the economic and social history of the former Yugoslavia, and after his retirement was appointed professor emeritus of economics at San Francisco State University. Tomasevich was born in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, part of Austria-Hungary, and after completing his schooling gained a doctorate in economics at the University of Basel in Switzerland. In the mid-1930s he worked at the National Bank of Yugoslavia in Belgrade and published three well-received books on Yugoslav national debt, fiscal policy, and money and credit respectively.

References