The Girard Reader

Author: René Girard
Publisher: Herder & Herder
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
Rene Girard, the author of groundbreaking scholarly books such as Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, has long been an intellectual cause celebre in Europe. Although he has studied and taught in the United States since the 1940s, he is now -- in his 70's -- finding his lifework praised and taught in academic and religious circles throughout the country.The Girard Reader brings that work to a broader audience. It includes major excerpts from Girard's books and articles which cover all aspects of his theories on violence, religion, and culture. These views cut across theology, biblical studies, anthropology, psychology, and literature. The book concludes with a conversation between Rene Girard and editor James G. Williams that brings new focus to his Christian vision and breathtaking ouevre.

Violence and the Sacred

Author: René Girard
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826477186
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
René Girard (1923-) was Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford Unviersity from 1981 until his retirement in 1995. Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant study of human evil. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory>

René Girard's Mimetic Theory

Author: Wolfgang Palaver
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1609173651
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 576

Book Description
A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day.

Discovering Girard

Author: Michael Kirwan
Publisher: Cowley Publications
ISBN: 1461624142
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
“Really wonderful; an elegantly written initiation into the mimetic theory. I am lucky to have interpreters who understand what I want to say and who can write so well.” —René Girard The work of René Girard is hugely influential in literature and cultural studies. But it is in understanding the relationship between religion and violence that his theory has created its greatest impact. Girard's understanding of mimetic rivalry and conflict and of scapegoating is seen by many to be the key to a completely new understanding of Christianity. Girard's name evokes curiosity and—often—strong feelings among devotees and skeptics. Discovering Girard is the first book to present Girard's work to a wider audience. It explains and appraises Girard's mimetic theory, shows its impact on theology and other disciplines, and manages to convey the excitement that a discovery of Girard's ideas often generates in readers.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

Author: René Girard
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826468535
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
Presenting an original global theory of culture, Girard explores the social function of violence and the mechanism of the social scapegoat. His vision is a challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion and psychoanalysis. Rene Gerard is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University, USA.

Mimesis and Theory

Author: René Girard
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804755809
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
Mimesis and Theory brings together twenty previously uncollected essays on literature and literary theory by one of the most important thinkers of the past thirty years.

Evolution of Desire

Author: Cynthia L Haven
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628953306
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
René Girard (1923–2015) was one of the leading thinkers of our era—a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies to offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history, and human destiny. His oeuvre, offering a “mimetic theory” of cultural origins and human behavior, inspired such writers as Milan Kundera and J. M. Coetzee, and earned him a place among the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française. Too often, however, his work is considered only within various academic specializations. This first-ever biographical study takes a wider view. Cynthia L. Haven traces the evolution of Girard’s thought in parallel with his life and times. She recounts his formative years in France and his arrival in a country torn by racial division, and reveals his insights into the collective delusions of our technological world and the changing nature of warfare. Drawing on interviews with Girard and his colleagues, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard provides an essential introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and original minds.

Oedipus Unbound

Author: René Girard
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804747806
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
These hard-to-find writings afford an inside look at the emergence of Girard's scapegoat theory from his pioneering analysis of rivalry and desire. Girard unbinds the Oedipal triangle from its Freudian moorings, replacing desire for the mother with desire for anyoneor anythinga rival desires."

Battling to the End

Author: René Girard
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1609171330
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
In Battling to the End René Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wrote On War. Clausewitz, who has been critiqued by military strategists, political scientists, and philosophers, famously postulated that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." He also seemed to believe that governments could constrain war. Clausewitz, a firsthand witness to the Napoleonic Wars, understood the nature of modern warfare. Far from controlling violence, politics follows in war's wake: the means of war have become its ends. René Girard shows us a Clausewitz who is a fascinated witness of history's acceleration. Haunted by the French-German conflict, Clausewitz clarifies more than anyone else the development that would ravage Europe. Battling to the End pushes aside the taboo that prevents us from seeing that the apocalypse has begun. Human violence is escaping our control; today it threatens the entire planet.

Rene Girard and Myth

Author: Richard Golsan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136763368
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book Description
First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.