Few works have been written in the field of mythology with greater ambition and depth than The Masks of God. Over four volumes, Joseph Campbell conducts an exhaustive comparative study of the various mythologies of the world, revealing their unitary and universal character, and how they are all still alive in the modern world.

In this fourth and final volume of The Masks of God, Campbell develops his idea of creative mythology, in the Shakespearean sense of the term, that is, as a mirror to show virtue and vice its true appearance, and to the generations of each century its authentic form and physiognomy. It is therefore a aspect of mythology that does not come from the dictations and theological analyses of the high priestly spheres, as in most religions, but springs from the intuitions, feelings, ideas and visions of artists and writers who, true to their intimate experience, have created new mythical stories and images , as is the case with medieval stories around the knights of the Round Table, the Grail or Tristan and Isolde, or the works of Dante, Nietzsche, Wagner, Thomas Mann and Joyce, or in Picasso's Guernica.

Early mythology, the first volume of this magna work, published between 1959 and 1968, researches the mythological motifs of prehistoric cultures in light of the most recent archaeological, anthropological and psychological discoveries. The second volume, Eastern Mythology, deals with the religions of Egypt, India, China and Japan. The third, Western Mythology, is a comparative study of the universal themes underlying the art, cults and texts of European culture. The work is completed with Creative Mythology, which deals with the importance of mythological heritage in the modern world and about human beings as creator of their own mythologies.