Violence And The Sacred

By (author) René Girard; By (author) Girard, René; Translated by Gregory, Patrick
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"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.''

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"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.''
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

Review quote
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
Biographical note

René Girard is 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 The Scapegoat, are available from Johns Hopkins University Press.