When Joseph Campbell traveled to Europe as a college student in the mid-1920s, he began to hear firsthand the philosophiesnoun.哲学 and mythologiesnoun.神话 of other cultures. It led to a lifelongadj.终身的 passion in comparative mythologynoun.神话. After studying cultures around the world, including Asian, African, European, Polynesian, and Native American, Campbell noticed their stories didn't just share thematic elements. The heroes in these tales also had a tendency to go through three distinctadj.与其它不同的 stages. They would be separated from their communities, made to endureverb.忍耐 a series of difficult trials, and emerge as enlightenedverb.启发 beingsnoun.存在 who then returned home to share their newfound wisdomnoun.智慧 and powers.
These stages became known as the Monomyth, or the archetypal hero's journey, and the structure Campbell describes has been influentialadj.有影响的 to countless storytellers ever since. Perhaps most famously, George Lucas was only able to finish his screenplaynoun.编剧 for the first Star Wars movie after reading Campbell's work.
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