The Scapegoat- Rene Girard

"An exhilarating book, lucid, concise, combative, provocative in the best sense of the word." —JOHN WILSON, Magill's Literary Annual

One of the most prominent and controversial critics of our time, René Girard has pursued a powerful line of inquiry across the fields of the humanities and the social sciences. In The Scapegoat he audaciously turns to classical mythology, medieval narrative, and the New Testament to explore the senses behind "texts of persecution," documents that recount collective violence from the standpoint of the persecutor.

Using the Oedipus story as a paradigm, Girard elucidates striking thematic and structural similarities between myths and persecution texts. And in the story of the Christian Passion he uncovers the same collective violence that he finds in all mythology. But the Passion is read from the point of view of the innocent victim. By rejecting all guilt, Christ breaks the mythic cycle of violence and the sacred and provides the model that has enabled Western culture to demystify its own violence.

"[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