Mimesis, Desire, and the Novel

Pierpaolo Antonello is Reader in Modern Italian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John’s College. With René Girard and João Cezar de Castro Rocha, he coauthored Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture, and he is a member of the Research and Publications committees of Imitatio.Heather Webb is lecturer in the Department of Italian at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Selwyn College. She specializes in medieval literature and culture with a particular interest in Dante. She is the author of The Medieval Heart and a number of articles on Catherine of Siena, Dante, and Giovanni da San Gimignano.

“This powerful collection of informed critical responses to René Girard’s seminal work—both to its central tenets and multiform applications—could not be more pressing in contemporary literary-cultural studies. Scholars across all the disciplines that Girard has interrogated will discover anew his key understanding: literature as theory is very much alive. “—Mary Orr, Professor of French, Director of the Institute of Language and Culture, University of Southampton

• Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part One. Theoretical Considerations Jealousy and Novelistic Knowledge - Maria DiBattista Desiring Proust: Girard against Deleuze - Alessia Ricciardi Within and Beyond Mimetic Desire - Luca Di Blasi On Girard’s Biblical Realism - Karen S. Feldman Creative Renunciation: The Spiritual Heart of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel - Wolfgang Palaver Part Two. Mimetic Hermeneutics in History The Desire to Be You: The Discourse of Praise for the Roman Emperor - Marco Formisano René Girard and (Medieval) Sanctity: A Reappraisal - Bill Burgwinkle Dubbiosi Disiri: Mimetic Processes in Dante’s Comedy - Manuele Gragnolati and Heather Webb For a Comparative Topography of Desire: Mimetic Theory and the World Map - Rosa Mucignat Nobody’s Fault: Dickens, René Girard, and the Novel -David Quint “Let Us Carve Him as a Feast Fit for the Gods”: Girard and Unjust Execution in Nineteenth-Century Narrative - Jan-Melissa Schramm Dostoyevsky’s Metaphysical Theater: The Underground Man and the Masochist in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel and Resurrection from the Underground - Yue Zhuo Deceit, Desire, Violence, and Death in the Short Stories of Georges Bernanos - Brian Sudlow Mimetic Desire in Otherworldly Narratives - Laura Wittman Desire, Deceit, and Defeat in the Work of Roberto Arlt - Jobst Welge Recantation without Conversion: Desire, Mimesis, and the Paradox of Engagement in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolio - Christoph F. E. Holzhey Jonathan Franzen’s Novelistic Conversion - Trevor Cribben Merrill Mimetic Desire and Monstrous Doubles in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones - Robert Buch Appendix. Literature and Christianity: A Personal View - René Girard Contributors Index