Campbell on Myth, Romantic Love, and Marriage

Abstract

Among the constant, continuing themes Joseph Campbell explores through his method of comparative mythology, none is more provocative, certainly none more timely, than that of romantic or passionate love and its expected outcome, marriage. Recognizing that in the West romantic love and marriage exist today in genuine crisis, Campbell speaks throughout his works to aspects and attributes of this subject from a perspective at once mythopoeic in its formulation, historical in its development, and personally transformative to individuals by its appearance and force in their lives. The nature of true romantic love gives absolute primacy to the individual and to his or her experience of life. If the inspiration inherent in romantic love resulted from a complex of forces rising to a boil in Western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the obvious reason at that time lay in the institution of marriage.