"To double business bound" : essays on literature, mimesis, and anthropology / René Girard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Girard, René, 1923-2015.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mimesis in literature.

Rites and ceremonies.

Structural anthropology.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xvi, 229 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Summary:

An individual desires an object, not for itself, but because another individual also desires it. This mimetic desire, Rene Girard contends, lies at the source of all human disorder and order. In brilliant readings of Dante, Camus, Nietzsche, Dostoevski, Levi-Strauss, Freud, and others, Girard draws out the thesis of mimetic desire--and ponders its suppression in the West since Plato: "The historical mutilation of mimesis . . . was no mere oversight, no fortuitous 'error.' Real awareness of mimetic desire threatens the flattering delusion we entertain not only about ourselves as individuals but also about the nature and origin of that collective self we call our society."

Contents:

The mimetic desire of Paolo and Francesca

Camus's stranger retried

The underground critic

Strategies of madness

Nietzsche, Wagner, and Dostoevski

Delirium as system

Perilous balance : a comic hypothesis

The plague in literature and myth

Differentiation and reciprocity in Lévi-Strauss and contemporary theory

Violence and representation in the mythical text

An interview with René Girard.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Originally published 1978, John Hopkins Paperback ed. 1988.

ISBN:

0801836557

9780801836558

OCLC:

18403600