Robert A. Segal

Short Biography

Robert Segal's field is theories – of myth and of religion. His PhD from Princeton University was in religions of the Greco-Roman world, and his focus was on Gnostic myths. His first book, a revision of his doctoral thesis, was on the first tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Poimandres: The Poimandres as Myth (Mouton de Gruyter 1986). Among the other books he has written or edited are In Quest of the Hero (Princeton 1989), Joseph Campbell (revised ed. Penguin 1990), The Allure of Gnosticism (Open Court 1995), The Gnostic Jung (Princeton and Routledge 1992), Jung on Mythology (Princeton and Routledge 1998), The Myth and Ritual Theory (Blackwell 1998), Theorizing about Myth (Massachusetts 1999), Hero Myths (Blackwell 2000), Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2004), The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion (Blackwell 2006), and Myth: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (4 vols., Routledge 2007). He is Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies, University of Aberdeen.