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rene girard shakespeare: A Theatre of Envy René Girard, 2000 In this groundbreaking work a foremost literary and cultural critic turns to the major figure in English literature William Shakespeare and proposes a dramatic new way of reading and performing his works. The key to A Theatre of Envy is René Girards's original expression and application of what he calls Mimetic Theory. For Girard, people desire according to the desires of others. He sees this as fundamental to the human condition and works out its implications in a most convincing and ultimately, easily comprehensible way. Bringing his insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night's Dream from the status of entertaining chaotic comedy to a profound and original commentary on the human condition. Shakespeare transforms the crude literary form of revenge tragedy into a profound and prophetic unmasking of violence - even more relevant today than in his time. Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare, Girard's prose is sophisticated enough for the academic as well as being accessible to the general reader. Anyone interested in literature, anthropology, psychology and particularly, theology as relevant to the overriding contemporary problems of violence in all its forms will want to read this challenging book. All those involved in theatrical productions and performance will find A Theatre of Envy full of exciting and practical ideas. 'In its enormous breathtaking scope, (René Girard's work) suggests...the projects of those 19th century intellectual giants (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud) who still cast such long shadows today. By contrast, contemporary criticism seems paltry and fainthearted.' Comparative Literature René Girard was born in Avignon, read cultural history in Paris and in 1947 went to the USA where he has for the last 50 years held a number of prestigious academic posts. He has written more than half a dozen books, best known of which are, Violence and the Sacred, The Scapegoat, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, he has also been featured in many interviews and magazine articles. His Martin D'Arcy Lecture - Victims, Violence and Christianity - delivered in Oxford in November 1997, aroused the enthusiastic interest of a wide variety of British experts in many fields as well as those involved in the wider and increasingly significant world of contemporary spirituality in all its popular and peremptory expressions. While not giving a naive answer René Girard does provide a profound and practical way to unmask violence not only in Shakespeare's world, but in our own. |
rene girard shakespeare: Shakespearean Cultures João Cezar de Castro Rocha, 2019-04-01 In Shakespearean Cultures, René Girard’s ideas on violence and the sacred inform an innovative analysis of contemporary Latin America. Castro Rocha proposes a new theoretical framework based upon the “poetics of emulation” and offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding the asymmetries of the modern world. Shakespearean cultures are those whose self-perception originates in the gaze of a hegemonic Other. The poetics of emulation is a strategy developed in situations of asymmetrical power relations. This strategy encompasses an array of procedures employed by artists, intellectuals, and writers situated at the less-favored side of such exchanges, whether they be cultural, political, or economic in nature. The framework developed in this book yields thought-provoking readings of canonical authors such as William Shakespeare, Gustave Flaubert, and Joseph Conrad. At the same time, it favors the insertion of Latin American authors into the comparative scope of world literature, and stages an unprecedented dialogue among European, North American, and Latin American readers of René Girard’s work. |
rene girard shakespeare: René Girard's Mimetic Theory Wolfgang Palaver, 2013-01-01 A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day. |
rene girard shakespeare: Conversations with René Girard René Girard, 2020-05-14 French theorist René Girard was one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. Read by international leaders, quoted by the French media, Girard influenced such writers as J.M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera. Dubbed “the new Darwin of the human sciences” and one of the most compelling thinkers of the age, Girard spent nearly four decades at Stanford exploring what it means to be human and making major contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, psychology and theology with his mimetic theory. This is the first collection of interviews with Girard, one that brings together discussions on Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Proust alongside the causes of conflict and violence and the role of imitation in human behavior. Granting important insights into Girard's life and thought, these provocative and lively conversations underline Girard's place as leading public intellectual and profound theorist. |
rene girard shakespeare: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World René Girard, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Guy Lefort, 1987 This is the single fullest summation of the ideas of one of the most eminent and controversial cultural theorists of our time. |
rene girard shakespeare: Mimesis and Theory René Girard, 2008 Mimesis and Theory brings together twenty previously uncollected essays on literature and literary theory by one of the most important thinkers of the past thirty years. |
rene girard shakespeare: The Prophetic Law Sandor Goodhart, 2014-01-01 To read literature is to read the way literature reads. René Girard’s immense body of work supports this thesis bountifully. Whether engaging the European novel, ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespeare’s plays, or Jewish and Christian scripture, Girard teaches us to read prophetically, not by offering a method he has developed, but by presenting the methodologies they have developed, the interpretative readings already available within (and constitutive of) such bodies of classical writing. In The Prophetic Law, literary scholar, theorist, and critic Sandor Goodhart divides his essays on René Girard since 1983 into four groupings. In three, he addresses Girardian concerns with Biblical scripture (Genesis and Exodus), literature (the European novel and Shakespeare), and philosophy and religious studies issues (especially ethical and Jewish subject matters). In a fourth section, he reproduces some of the polemical exchanges in which he has participated with others—including René Girard himself—as part of what could justly be deemed Jewish-Christian dialogue. The twelve texts that make up the heart of this captivating volume constitute the bulk of the author’s writings to date on Girard outside of his three previous books on Girardian topics. Taken together, they offer a comprehensive engagement with Girard’s sharpest and most original literary, anthropological, and scriptural insights. |
rene girard shakespeare: René Girard and Secular Modernity Scott Cowdell, 2024-11 In René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis, Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of René Girard's controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard's thought, the centrality of Christ in Girard's thinking, and, in particular, Girard's distinctive take on the uniqueness and finality of Christ in terms of his impact on Western culture. In Girard's singular vision, according to Cowdell, secular modernity has emerged thanks to the Bible's exposure of the cathartic violence that is at the root of religious prohibitions, myths, and rituals. In the literature, the psychology, and most recently the military history of modernity, Girard discerns a consistent slide into an apocalypse that challenges modern ideas of romanticism, individualism, and progressivism. In the first three chapters, Cowdell examines the three elements of Girard's basic intellectual vision (mimesis, sacrifice, biblical hermeneutics) and brings this vision to a constructive interpretation of secularization and modernity, as these terms are understood in the broadest sense today. Chapter 4 focuses on modern institutions, chiefly the nation state and the market, that function to restrain the outbreak of violence. And finally, Cowdell discusses the apocalyptic dimension of Girard's theory in relation to modern warfare and terrorism. Here, Cowdell engages with the most recent writings of Girard (particularly his Battling to the End) and applies them to further conversations in cultural theology, political science, and philosophy. Cowdell takes up and extends Girard's own warning concerning an alternative to a future apocalypse: What sort of conversion must humans undergo, before it is too late? |
rene girard shakespeare: Shakespeare's Big Men Richard van Oort, 2016-06-16 Shakespeare’s Big Men examines five Shakespearean tragedies – Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus – through the lens of generative anthropology and the insights of its founder, Eric Gans. Generative anthropology’s theory of the origins of human society explains the social function of tragedy: to defer our resentment against the “big men” who dominate society by letting us first identify with the tragic protagonist and his resentment, then allowing us to repudiate the protagonist’s resentful rage and achieve theatrical catharsis. Drawing on this hypothesis, Richard van Oort offers inspired readings of Shakespeare’s plays and their representations of desire, resentment, guilt, and evil. His analysis revives the universal spirit in Shakespearean criticism, illustrating how the plays can serve as a way to understand the ethical dilemma of resentment and discover within ourselves the nature of the human experience. |
rene girard shakespeare: The Girard Reader René Girard, 1996 Rene Girard, the author of groundbreaking scholarly books such as Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, has long been an intellectual cause celebre in Europe. Although he has studied and taught in the United States since the 1940s, he is now -- in his 70's -- finding his lifework praised and taught in academic and religious circles throughout the country.The Girard Reader brings that work to a broader audience. It includes major excerpts from Girard's books and articles which cover all aspects of his theories on violence, religion, and culture. These views cut across theology, biblical studies, anthropology, psychology, and literature. The book concludes with a conversation between Rene Girard and editor James G. Williams that brings new focus to his Christian vision and breathtaking ouevre. |
rene girard shakespeare: Violence and the Sacred René Girard, 1988-01-01 His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy.--Victor Brombert, Chronicle of Higher Education. |
rene girard shakespeare: Girard and Theology Michael Kirwan, 2009-04-12 A profound introduction to how the work of Rene Girard has had implications for new theological concepts on atonement and sacrifice. |
rene girard shakespeare: Women and Revenge in Shakespeare Marguerite A. Tassi, 2011 Can there be a virtue in vengeance? Can revenge do ethical work? Can revenge be the obligation of women? This wide-ranging literary study looks at Shakespeare's women and finds bold answers to questions such as these. A surprising number of Shakespeare's female characters respond to moral outrages by expressing a strong desire for vengeance. This book's analysis of these characters and their circumstances offers incisive critical perceptions of feminine anger, ethics, and agency and challenges our assumptions about the role of gender in revenge. In this provocative book, Marguerite A. Tassi counters longstanding critical opinions on revenge: that it is the sole province of men in Western literature and culture, that it is a barbaric, morally depraved, irrational instinct, and that it is antithetical to justice. Countless examples have been mined from Shakespeare's dramas to reveal women's profound concerns with revenge and justice, honor and shame, crime and punishment. In placing the critical focus on avenging women, this book significantly redresses a gender imbalance in scholarly treatments of revenge, particularly in early modern literature. |
rene girard shakespeare: When Wheat is Green Jos Wilton (pseud.), Beatrice Chambers, 1895 |
rene girard shakespeare: Mimesis and Science Scott R. Garrels, 2011-10-31 This exciting compendium brings together, for the first time, some of the foremost scholars of René Girard’s mimetic theory, with leading imitation researchers from the cognitive, developmental, and neuro sciences. These chapters explore some of the major discoveries and developments concerning the foundational, yet previously overlooked, role of imitation in human life, revealing the unique theoretical links that can now be made from the neural basis of social interaction to the structure and evolution of human culture and religion. Together, mimetic scholars and imitation researchers are on the cutting edge of some of the most important breakthroughs in understanding the distinctive human capacity for both incredible acts of empathy and compassion as well as mass antipathy and violence. As a result, this interdisciplinary volume promises to help shed light on some of the most pressing and complex questions of our contemporary world. |
rene girard shakespeare: Evolution and Conversion René Girard, 2017-02-23 Evolution and Conversion explores the main tenets of René Girard's thought in a series of dialogues. Here, Girard reflects on the evolution of his thought and offers striking new insights on topics such as violence, religion, desire and literature. His long argument is a historical one in which the origin of culture and religion is reunited in the contemporary world by means of a reinterpretation of Christianity and an understanding of the intrinsically violent nature of human beings. He also offers provocative re-readings of Biblical and literary texts and responds to statements by Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Including an introduction by the authors, this is a revealing text by one of the most original thinkers of our time. |
rene girard shakespeare: A Theater of Envy René Girard, 1991 The author proposes dramatic new interpretations of nearly all of Shakespeare's plays and poems. |
rene girard shakespeare: Clever as Serpents Jim Grote, 1997 Centuries ago Thomas Aquinas remarked that there can be no joy in life if there is no joy in one's work. Drawing upon the seminal insights of Rene Girard, Clever as Serpents confronts this timeless issue of finding peace in one's work and offers practical guidance on how people, acting together, can cultivate virtuous business. Clever as Serpents provides ethical insight in business life, the job market, and office politics, revealing that business culture, while often corrupt, can be transformed through the practice of asceticism. It suggests that instead of renouncing worldly comforts and retreating to a monastery, business asceticism embraces and masters the discomforts of business life through disciplined and unique approach to the rigors of the competitive marketplace. Clever as Serpents is divided into two parts - theory and strategy. Chapters one through five deal with a unique approach to management theory and the behavior of financial markets. It first examines the myths that hide the reality of the marketplace. Chapter two examines the myth of freedom; chapter three, the myth of competition. With these myths exposed, chapters four and five examine the secret of the marketplace through the theories of borrowed desire and the management complex. Chapters six through ten deal with practical techniques for dealing with the jungle of office politics. Chapter six relates the theory of borrowed desire to the dynamics of office gossip. Chapters seven through nine offer practical tips on surviving office politics, becoming successful, and redeeming the marketplace through ethical action. For the many people who experience the workplace as frustrating or unfair, struggle with office politics - as well as the question of whether their workday lives have any religious significance or spiritual depth - this work provides concrete suggestions for practicing an ethics of survival, of success, and of service. Jim Grote works in stewardship and development for a Roman Catholic archdiocese. He has taught business ethics and philosophy at several colleges and universities. Co-author ofTheology and Technology, he has written articles for the Catholic Worker, Church, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Cross Currents, and Spirituality Today. John McGeeney, an attorney for a financial services company, has worked in securities law for a Fortune 500company, and for a large social service organization in New York City. |
rene girard shakespeare: Marxism and Christianity Alasdair MacIntyre, 1984-03-15 Contending that Marxism achieved its unique position in part by adopting the content and functions of Christianity, MacIntyre details the religious attitudes and modes of belief that appear in Marxist doctrine as it developed historically from the philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach, and as it has been carried on by latter-day interpreters from Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky to Kautsky and Lukacs. The result is a lucid exposition of Marxism and an incisive account of its persistence and continuing importance. |
rene girard shakespeare: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning Ren Girard, 2001-01-01 Rene Girard holds up the gospels as mirrors that reveal our broken humanity, and shows that they also reflect a new reality that can make us whole. Like Simone Weil, Girard looks at the Bible as a map of human behavior, and sees Jesus Christ as the turning point leading to new life. The title echoes Jesus' words: I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven. Girard persuades us that even as our world grows increasingly violent the power of the Christ-event is so great that the evils of scapegoating and sacrifice are being defeated even now. A new community, God's nonviolent kingdom, is being realized -- even now. |
rene girard shakespeare: Oedipus Unbound René Girard, 2022 Did Oedipus really kill his father and marry his mother? Or is he nothing but a scapegoat, set up to take the blame for a crisis afflicting Thebes? For René Girard, the mythic accusations of patricide and incest are symptomatic of a plague-stricken community's hunt for a culprit to punish, and Girard succeeds in making us see an age-old myth in a wholly new light. The hard-to-find writings assembled here include three major early essays, never before available in English, which afford a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the emergence of Girard's scapegoat theory from his pioneering analysis of rivalry and desire. Girard unbinds the Oedipal triangle from its Freudian moorings, replacing desire for the mother with desire for anyone--or anything--a rival desires. In a wide-ranging and provocative introduction, Mark R. Anspach presents fresh evidence for Girard's hypotheses from classical studies, literature, anthropology, and the life of Freud himself. |
rene girard shakespeare: René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture Brian Bajzek, 2021-08-10 René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture provides a fresh and engaging introduction to and the application of René Girard’s mimetic theory. From movies to social media, television to graphic novels, the contributors explore popular culture’s theological depths and challenge readers to consider what culture reveals about them. |
rene girard shakespeare: Radical Sacrifice Terry Eagleton, 2018-04-30 A trenchant analysis of sacrifice as the foundation of the modern, as well as the ancient, social order The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion, while drawing together a host of philosophers, theologians, and texts—from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida to the Aeneid and The Wings of the Dove. Brilliant meditations on death and eros, Shakespeare and St. Paul, irony and hybridity explore the meaning of sacrifice in modernity, casting off misperceptions of barbarity to reconnect the radical idea to politics and revolution. |
rene girard shakespeare: The Mimic Men V. S. Naipaul, 2011-12-14 A sober novel about a tempestuous and tormented soul carrying the burdens of postcolonialism in London. Winner of the W. H. Smith Literary Award. |
rene girard shakespeare: From Anthropology to Social Theory Arpad Szakolczai, Bjørn Thomassen, 2019-01-17 Presenting a ground-breaking revitalization of contemporary social theory, this book revisits the rise of the modern world to reopen the dialogue between anthropology and sociology. Using concepts developed by a series of 'maverick' anthropologists who were systematically marginalised as their ideas fell outside the standard academic canon, such as Arnold van Gennep, Marcel Mauss, Paul Radin, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Gregory Bateson, the authors argue that such concepts are necessary for understanding better the rise and dynamics of the modern world, including the development of the social sciences, in particular sociology and anthropology. Concepts discussed include liminality, imitation, schismogenesis and trickster, which provide an anthropological 'toolkit' for readers to develop innovative understandings of the underlying power mechanisms of globalized modernity. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, the book is clearly structured. Part I introduces the 'maverick' anthropologists, while Part II applies the maverick tool-kit to revisit the history of sociological thought and the question of modernity. |
rene girard shakespeare: Shakespeare and Literary Theory Jonathan Gil Harris, 2010-08-19 OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. How is it that the British literary critic Terry Eagleton can say that 'it is difficult to read Shakespeare without feeling that he was almost certainly familiar with the writings of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein and Derrida', or that the Slovenian psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj %Zi%zek can observe that 'Shakespeare without doubt had read Lacan'? Shakespeare and Literary Theory argues that literary theory is less an external set of ideas anachronistically imposed on Shakespeare's texts than a mode - or several modes - of critical reflection inspired by, and emerging from, his writing. These modes together constitute what we might call 'Shakespearian theory': theory that is not just about Shakespeare but also derives its energy from Shakespeare. To name just a few examples: Karl Marx was an avid reader of Shakespeare and used Timon of Athens to illustrate aspects of his economic theory; psychoanalytic theorists from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan have explained some of their most axiomatic positions with reference to Hamlet; Michel Foucault's early theoretical writing on dreams and madness returns repeatedly to Macbeth; Jacques Derrida's deconstructive philosophy is articulated in dialogue with Shakespeare's plays, including Romeo and Juliet; French feminism's best-known essay is Hélène Cixous's meditation on Antony and Cleopatra; certain strands of queer theory derive their impetus from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's reading of the Sonnets; Gilles Deleuze alights on Richard III as an exemplary instance of his theory of the war machine; and postcolonial theory owes a large debt to Aimé Césaire's revision of The Tempest. By reading what theoretical movements from formalism and structuralism to cultural materialism and actor-network theory have had to say about and in concert with Shakespeare, we can begin to get a sense of how much the DNA of contemporary literary theory contains a startling abundance of chromosomes - concepts, preoccupations, ways of using language - that are of Shakespearian provenance. |
rene girard shakespeare: Emulation on the Shakespearean Stage Asst Prof Vernon Guy Dickson, 2013-11-28 The English Renaissance has long been considered a period with a particular focus on imitation; however, much related scholarship has misunderstood or simply marginalized the significance of emulative practices and theories in the period. This work uses the interactions of a range of English Renaissance plays with ancient and Renaissance rhetorics to analyze the conflicted uses of emulation in the period (including the theory and praxis of rhetorical imitatio, humanist notions of exemplarity, and the stage’s purported ability to move spectators to emulate depicted characters). This book emphasizes the need to see emulation not as a solely (or even primarily) literary practice, but rather as a significant aspect of Renaissance culture, giving insight into notions of self, society, and the epistemologies of the period and informed by the period’s own sense of theory and history. Among the individual texts examined here are Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, Jonson’s Catiline, and Massinger’s The Roman Actor (with its strong relation to Jonson’s Sejanus). |
rene girard shakespeare: The Shattering of the Self Cynthia Marshall, 2003-05-22 In The Shattering of the Self: Violence, Subjectivity, and Early Modern Texts, Cynthia Marshall reconceptualizes the place and function of violence in Renaissance literature. During the Renaissance an emerging concept of the autonomous self within art, politics, religion, commerce, and other areas existed in tandem with an established, popular sense of the self as fluid, unstable, and volatile. Marshall examines an early modern fascination with erotically charged violence to show how texts of various kinds allowed temporary release from an individualism that was constraining. Scenes such as Gloucester's blinding and Cordelia's death in King Lear or the dismemberment and sexual violence depicted in Titus Andronicus allowed audience members not only a release but a shattering—as opposed to an affirmation—of the self. Marshall draws upon close readings of Shakespearean plays, Petrarchan sonnets, John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the Christian Martyrs, and John Ford's The Broken Heart to successfully address questions of subjectivity, psychoanalytic theory, and identity via a cultural response to art. Timely in its offering of an account that is both historically and psychoanalytically informed, The Shattering of the Self argues for a renewed attention to the place of fantasy in this literature and will be of interest to scholars working in Renaissance and early modern studies, literary theory, gender studies, and film theory. |
rene girard shakespeare: Shakespeare Russ McDonald, 2004-01-30 Shakespeare: Criticism and Theory is an anthology of the most significant essays and book chapters published on Shakespeare in the second half of the twentieth century. An anthology of about 50 of the most significant essays and book chapters published on Shakespeare in the second half of the twentieth century. Introduces students to the variety of theoretical positions, thematic claims, methodologies, and modes of argument in Shakespeare criticism over the last 50 years. Critical views represented range from the old style historicism of E.M.W. Tillyard and the new criticism of William Empson to the new historicism of Stephen Greenblatt and the feminist perspective of Catherine Belsey. Pieces are organised into categories of critical thought and introduced in clear language. Most pieces are reproduced in their entirety. |
rene girard shakespeare: Wanting Luke Burgis, 2021-06-01 * Financial Times Business Book of the Month * Next Big Idea Club Nominee * One of Bloomberg's 52 New Books That Top Business Leaders Are Recommending * Aleo Review of Books 2022 Book of the Year * A groundbreaking exploration of why we want what we want, and a toolkit for freeing ourselves from chasing unfulfilling desires. Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful—yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies. According to Girard, humans don’t desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic—we imitate what other people want. This affects the way we choose partners, friends, careers, clothes, and vacation destinations. Mimetic desire is responsible for the formation of our very identities. It explains the enduring relevancy of Shakespeare’s plays, why Peter Thiel decided to be the first investor in Facebook, and why our world is growing more divided as it becomes more connected. Wanting also shows that conflict does not arise because of our differences—it comes from our sameness. Because we learn to want what other people want, we often end up competing for the same things. Ignoring our large similarities, we cling to our perceived differences. Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, teacher, and student of classical philosophy and theology, Burgis shares tactics that help turn blind wanting into intentional wanting--not by trying to rid ourselves of desire, but by desiring differently. It’s possible to be more in control of the things we want, to achieve more independence from trends and bubbles, and to find more meaning in our work and lives. The future will be shaped by our desires. Wanting shows us how to desire a better one. |
rene girard shakespeare: Notorious Identity Linda Charnes, 1993 Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, were significant figures before Shakespeare revitalized them on stage. When he did, Charnes argues, he used these legendary figures to explore the emergence of a new kind of fame, notorious identity. |
rene girard shakespeare: The Genesis of Desire Jean-Michel Oughourlian, 2010 Our desire makes us sick. The throes of rivalry are at the heart of our attraction to one another. This is the central thesis of Jean-Michel Oughourlian's The Genesis of Desire, where the war of the sexes is finally given a scientific explanation. The discovery of mirror neurons corroborates his ideas, clarifying the phenomena of empathy and the mechanisms of violent reciprocity. |
rene girard shakespeare: Rene Girard Chris Fleming, 2004-09-03 In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the work of Rene Girard, thought by many to be one of the most important, if controversial, cultural theorists of the twentieth century. Girard's work is extraordinarily innovative and wide-ranging, cutting across central concerns in philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary theory, anthropology, theology, and sociology. In this much-needed introduction, Chris Fleming traces the development of Girard's thought over forty years, describing the context in which he worked and his influence on a number of disciplines. He unpacks the hypotheses at the centre of Girard's thought - mimetic desire, surrogate victimage and scapegoating, myth, ritual, and the sacred - and provides an assessment of Girard's place in the contemporary academy. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book constitutes an excellent overview of Girard's work and is essential reading for students and researchers in continental philosophy, theology, literary studies, French studies, and cultural studies. |
rene girard shakespeare: God's Gamble Gil Bailie, 2016-10-18 That Christ is the logic, the meaning of creation itself, is a central but often neglected doctrine of Catholic Christianity. Though it is a mystery, sufficient traces of it can be found. Drawing primarily on the insights of Rene Girard and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Gil Bailie's new book is an effort to locate and explicate some of these traces. |
rene girard shakespeare: Deceit, Desire, and the Novel René Girard, 1976-04 Examines the novel based on an altruistic hero who dies, through a description of five novelists. |
rene girard shakespeare: For René Girard Sandor Goodhart, Jorgen Jorgensen, Tom Ryba, James Williams, 2012-01-01 In his explorations of the relations between the sacred and violence, René Girard has hit upon the origin of culture—the way culture began, the way it continues to organize itself. The way communities of human beings structure themselves in a manner that is different from that of other species on the planet. Like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Martin Buber, or others who have changed the way we think in the humanities or in the human sciences, Girard has put forth a set of ideas that have altered our perceptions of the world in which we function. We will never be able to think the same way again about mimetic desire, about the scapegoat mechanism, and about the role of Jewish and Christian scripture in explaining sacrifice, violence, and the crises from which our culture has been born. The contributions fall into roughly four areas of interpretive work: religion and religious study; literary study; the philosophy of social science; and psychological studies. The essays presented here are offered as essays in the older French sense of attempts (essayer) or trials of ideas, as indeed Girard has tried out ideas with us. With a conscious echo of Montaigne, then, this hommage volume is titled Essays in Friendship and in Truth. |
rene girard shakespeare: Shakespeare's Big Men Richard van Oort, 2016-01-01 Shakespeare's Big Men examines five Shakespearean tragedies - Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus - through the lens of generative anthropology and the insights of its founder, Eric Gans. Generative anthropology's theory of the origins of human society explains the social function of tragedy: to defer our resentment against the big men who dominate society by letting us first identify with the tragic protagonist and his resentment, then allowing us to repudiate the protagonist's resentful rage and achieve theatrical catharsis. Drawing on this hypothesis, Richard van Oort offers inspired readings of Shakespeare's plays and their representations of desire, resentment, guilt, and evil. His analysis revives the universal spirit in Shakespearean criticism, illustrating how the plays can serve as a way to understand the ethical dilemma of resentment and discover within ourselves the nature of the human experience. |
rene girard shakespeare: Shakespeare Survey Stanley Wells, 2002-11-28 The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback. |
rene girard shakespeare: Progress and Religion Christopher Dawson, 2012-08-09 Progress and Religion was perhaps the most influential of all Christopher Dawson's books, establishing him as an interpreter of history and a historian of ideas. |
rene girard shakespeare: Stay, Illusion! Simon Critchley, Jamieson Webster, 2013-06-25 An analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet explores the prismatic qualities that enable the play to project meaning, considering Hamlet's political context, relation to religion, and reflection of love and desire. |
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【オンライン先行】 Rash-guard Dress ¥ 45,000(税込49,500) Sold Out
Striped Dress - rene.ne.jp
品番 6526630 カラー ブルーストライプ、ブラックストライプ 素材 表地:レーヨン79%、ナイロン21% オーガン:ポリエステル100%
René
品番 5526081 カラー ピンクストライプ、グレージュストライプ 素材 表地:ポリエステル100%、ポケット袋布、ポリエステル100%
Knit Cardigan - rene.ne.jp
着心地抜群の、ルネの定番素材「ピークス」。 素材自身がもつ絹のように上品な光沢を、フラットに滑らかに編み上げた ...
Super Light Knit - rene.ne.jp
品番 6522160 カラー ルージュクリュ、ネイビー、ブラック 素材 ニット:ポリエステル100% 機能 手洗い可
Dress - rene.ne.jp
品番 6526220 カラー シアーブラック 素材 表地:綿100% 裏地:ポリエステル100% 機能 生地/イタリー製
René
Coat Collection 2025 -Specially Made To Order-Into the Blue. View More
New Arrivals - re. Ne
【大人百花春号掲載】 Pearl Pierced Earrings with Flower ¥ 29,000(税込31,900)
Dress - rene.ne.jp
品番 5526110 カラー ホワイト、グリシーヌパープル、ブラック 素材 表地:ポリエステル99%、ポリウレタン1% 裏地:ポリエステル100%
Rash-guard Jacket - rene.ne.jp
品番 5527021 カラー ホワイト、ブラック 素材 表地:ナイロン86%、ポリウレタン14% 別生地:ポリエステル100% 裏地:ポリエステル100%
Dress - re. Ne
【オンライン先行】 Rash-guard Dress ¥ 45,000(税込49,500) Sold Out
Striped Dress - rene.ne.jp
品番 6526630 カラー ブルーストライプ、ブラックストライプ 素材 表地:レーヨン79%、ナイロン21% オーガン:ポリエステル100%
René
品番 5526081 カラー ピンクストライプ、グレージュストライプ 素材 表地:ポリエステル100%、ポケット袋布、ポリエステル100%
Knit Cardigan - rene.ne.jp
着心地抜群の、ルネの定番素材「ピークス」。 素材自身がもつ絹のように上品な光沢を、フラットに滑らかに編み上げた ...
Super Light Knit - rene.ne.jp
品番 6522160 カラー ルージュクリュ、ネイビー、ブラック 素材 ニット:ポリエステル100% 機能 手洗い可
Dress - rene.ne.jp
品番 6526220 カラー シアーブラック 素材 表地:綿100% 裏地:ポリエステル100% 機能 生地/イタリー製