The Scapegoat / Edition 1

by René Girard, Yvonne Freccero

Overview

Widely regarded as one of the most profound critics of our time, René Girard has pursued a powerful line of inquiry across the fields of the humanities and the social sciences. His theories, which the French press has termed "l'hypothèse girardienne," have sparked interdisciplinary, even international, controversy. In The Scapegoat, Girard applies his approach to "texts of persecution," documents that recount phenomena of collective violence from the standpoint of the persecutor—documents such as the medieval poet Guillaume de Machaut's Judgement of the King of Navarre, which blames the Jews for the Black Death and describes their mass murder.

Girard compares persecution texts with myths, most notably with the myth of Oedipus, and finds strikingly similar themes and structures. Could myths regularly conceal texts of persecution? Girard's answers lies in a study of the Christian Passion, which represents the same central event, the same collective violence, found in all mythology, but which is read from the point of view of the innocent victim. The Passion text provides the model interpretation that has enabled Western culture to demystify its own violence—a demystification Girard now extends to mythology.

Underlying Girard's daring textual hypothesis is a powerful theory of history and culture. Christ's rejection of all guilt breaks the mythic cycle of violence and the sacred. The scapegoat becomes the Lamb of God; "the foolish genesis of blood-stained idols and the false gods of superstition, politics, and ideologies" are revealed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801839177
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1989
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	465,047
Product dimensions:	6.00(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

Chapter 1. Guillaume de Machaut and the Jews
Chapter 2. Stereotypes of Persecution
Chapter 3. What is a Myth?
Chapter 4. Violence and Magic
Chapter 5. Teotihuacan
Chapter 6. Ases, Curets, and Titans
Chapter 7. The Crime of the Gods
Chapter 8. The Science of Myths
Chapter 9. The Key Words of the Gospel Passion
Chapter 10. That Only One Man Should Die
Chapter 11. The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
Chapter 12. Peter's Denial
Chapter 13. The Demons of Gerasa
Chapter 14. Satan Divided Against Himself
Chapter 15. History and the Paraclete
Index

Editorial Reviews

[Girard's] methods of extrapolating to find cultural history behind myths, and of reading hidden verification through silence, are worthy enrichments of the critic's arsenal.
—John Yoder, Religion and Literature

[Girard's] methods of extrapolating to find cultural history behind myths, and of reading hidden verification through silence, are worthy enrichments of the critic's arsenal.
—John Yoder, Religion and Literature

From the Publisher

[Girard's] methods of extrapolating to find cultural history behind myths, and of reading hidden verification through silence, are worthy enrichments of the critic's arsenal.

Religion and Literature - John Yoder

[Girard's] methods of extrapolating to find cultural history behind myths, and of reading hidden verification through silence, are worthy enrichments of the critic's arsenal.

— John Yoder

Religion and Literature