Violence and the Sacred

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.

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

• AcknowledgmentsChapter 1. SacrificeChapter 2. The Sacrificial CrisisChapter 3. Oedipus and the Surrogate VictimChapter 4. The Origins of Myth and RitualChapter 5. DionysusChapter 6. From Mimetic Desire to the Monstrous DoubleChapter 7. Freud and the Oedipus ComplesChapter 8. Totem and Taboo and the Incest ProhibitionChapter 9. Lévi-Strauss, Structuralism, and Marriage LawsChapter 10. The Gods, the Dead, the Sacred, and Sacrificial SubstitutionChapter 11. The Unity of All RitesConclusionBibliographyIndex