" Girard's] methods of extrapolating to find cultural history behind myths, and of reading hidden verification through silence, are worthy enrichments of the critic's arsenal." -- John Yoder, "Religion and Literature."[...]

In "Rene Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis," Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of Rene Girard's controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard's thought, the centrality of Christ in G[...]

In his latest book on the ground-breaking work of Rene Girard (1923-2015), Scott Cowdell sets out a new perspective on mimetic theory and theology: he develops the proposed connection between Girardian thought and theological dramatic theory in new directions, engaging with issues of evolutionary su[...]

Rene Girard is one of the most divisive and striking intellectuals of the 20th century. Over the past forty years, his work has continued to exert an influence across literary theory, philosophy and the social sciences. Echoing the format of his early works, Evolution and Conversion brings Girard in[...]

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 [...]

Essays on Literature and Criticism 19532005. 20 of Rene Girards uncollated essays on literature and literary theory that have left an indelible mark on the field.[...]

Ren Girard (1923-) was Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford Unviersity from 1981 until his retirement in 1995. Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant study of human evil. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature a[...]

For half a century Rene Girard's theories of mimetic desire and scapegoating have captivated the imagination of thinkers and doers in many fields as an incisive look into the human condition, particularly the roots of violence. In a 1993 interview with Rebecca Adams, he highlighted the positive dime[...]

A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist Rene Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical "difference") with the help of examples from literat[...]