Violence and the Sacred / Edition 1

by René Girard, Patrick Gregory

Overview

Violence and the Sacred is René Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801822186
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1979
Series:	John Hopkins Paperback Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	182,911
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

René Girard is a Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University. Two of his books, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, which was also translated by Yvonne Freccero, and Violence and the Sacred, are available from Johns Hopkins University Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Sacrifice
Chapter 2. The Sacrificial Crisis
Chapter 3. Oedipus and the Surrogate Victim
Chapter 4. The Origins of Myth and Ritual
Chapter 5. Dionysus
Chapter 6. From Mimetic Desire to the Monstrous Double
Chapter 7. Freud and the Oedipus Comples
Chapter 8. Totem and Taboo and the Incest Prohibition
Chapter 9. Lévi-Strauss, Structuralism, and Marriage Laws
Chapter 10. The Gods, the Dead, the Sacred, and Sacrificial Substitution
Chapter 11. The Unity of All Rites
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy.
—Victor Brombert, Chronicle of Higher Education

From the Publisher

I regard his book as crucial reading for anyone interested in the dynamics of society and culture. He presents the best case I have seen for the promacy of social order.

Victor Turner

This brilliant study of human evil, first published in France to critical acclaim, demands comparison with Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil, as well as with Eli Sagan's Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form. . . . This is a major study in the anthropology of religion, Greek literature, and the human psyche

Choice

His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy.

Chronicle of Higher Education - Victor Brombert