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Have you noticed, after thinking back on a book you’ve just finished flipping through (or movie you’ve finished watching or game you’ve finished playing, etc.), that it feels surprisingly similar to other stories you may have read?
Narrative seem to echo one another or share similar structures, and many of the most popular and persistent stories told today are adaptations of older tales that were foundational to ancient societies.
Disney movies, dozens of which are animated appropriations of fairy tales, myths, and legends from civilizations throughout time, are quintessential examples of this.
On the oriental side of the world, manga and anime exhibit derived themes or components too, such as:
One particularly famous mythological scholar, Joseph Campbell, dedicated his life to examining many many maaaaany mythologies and folktales originating from cultures across history. Eventually, he conceived of an concept called the ‘Hero’s Journey’ (or ‘Heroine’s Journey’), also known as the ‘Monomyth’, which outlines a fundamental narrative structure that is common to numerous mythological tales regardless of their origin.
Joseph Campbell talks about the Hero’s Journey, and how the stories of character development and transformation recur in mythology.
Click the above image to view the video, which is an excerpt from a longer interview. The longer interview videos can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntWLq6U5YWE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu4wVTl6sAE
Crash Course made a great summary video of the structure and stages of the Hero’s Journey. Click the image below to view it on YouTube!
Crash Course’s videos are generally family friendly, and the channel produces many educational series on assorted topics such as Economics, History, Science, etc.
The application of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ template for character transformation and its application to a Star Wars movie by Rian Johnson (the director of the 8th Star Wars Movie ‘The Last Jedi’) is seen in youtuber Nerrel’s review of the movie
Content warning! strong/coarse language 🤬 is used by the reviewer (not Campbell, but the Youtuber Nerrel) throughout the broader video if you decide to watch it in full, but the excerpt with Campbell is SFW
On this page, I attempt to list some of the original, foundational, and famous texts belonging different civilisations in order to make a reference source of possible inspirations that modern texts (commonly stocked by libraries) may be
More simply, this page is a bibliography of prominent texts from authors of many different regions and time periods across the planet for the sake of familiarising myself or a blog reader with those titles and their possible derivative works.
Another great source of influential books is ‘100 Books that Changed the World’, by Scott Christianson and Colin Salter, which is much more in-depth and exploratory of why and how those 100 titles are so ingrained into the memory of humanity.
Project Gutenberg, a free online archive of ebooks and digitized texts of seminal literature, often hosts readable transcripts of these larger-than-life narratives, so I’ll try to include links to Gutenberg websites where possible.
Please note that I am learning about these titles gradually and will add more over time. If any sections are underpopulated or completely empty, that means I am ignorant or unaware or haven’t gotten around to adding them yet, not that there are a lack of extant titles.
Entries are grouped by region of origin (continent or country). I’m including links to the works’ respective entries on Wikipedia (background info and lots more), Project Gutenberg (where the original text or translations can be perused), and TVTropes (very useful for intertextual analysis)
The format for each entry is roughly as follows (I’M UPDATING TO THIS FORMAT OVER TIME)
Click the little triangles beside each region to expand its section.
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