The scapegoat
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The scapegoat
（Johns Hopkins paperbacks）
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, c1986
- : pbk
- Other Title
-
Le bouc émissaire
Available at / 14 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Translation of: Le bouc émissaire
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Widely regarded as one of the most profound critics of our time, Rene 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'hypothese 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.
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
by "Nielsen BookData"