The Birth of Tragedy itself is structured around an explanation of the rise of literature in Greek culture. The artistic impulse first manifests itself with the invention of the pantheon of Olympic gods, then with...

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion –...

In this work, first published as “Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures,” Levy-Bruhl speculated about what he posited as the two basic mindsets of mankind; “primitive” and “Western.” The primitive mind does not differentiate...

Originally titled The Integration of the Personality, this title was part of Joseph Campbell’s Sarah Lawrence Reading List. The work includes papers on child psychology, education, and individuation, underlining the overwhelming importance of parents and...

The Interpretation of Dreams is a book by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The publication inaugurated the theory of Freudian dream analysis and introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation.

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is a record not of a literal journey but of a meditative journey across time and space into the medieval imagination. Using the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of the...

First published in English in 1954, this founding work of the history of religions secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade. Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing...