A term coined by novelist James Joyce and used by Joseph Campbell and David Leeming to describe an overall schema for categorizing and analyzing myths in terms of both form and content. Myths of the creation and destruction of the cosmos correspond with those of the hero's quest. Examples of recurrent motifs in the monomyth of the hero are the miraculous conception and birth, his/her departure from home, crossing the threshold, a series of tests or trials, death (descent into the Underworld), rebirth and apotheosis.

The monomyth (often referred to as the hero's journey) is a description of a basic pattern found in many myths from around the world. This universal pattern was described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/ Monomyth website accessed November 28, 2006. A noted scholar of novelist James Joyce, Campbell borrowed the term monomyth from Joyce's Finnegans Wake.