Oedipus Unbound

by Girard, Rene

• ISBN13: 9780804747806
• ISBN10: 0804747806
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-02-04
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

Did Oedipusreallykill 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 Rene 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 anyoneor anythinga 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.

Author Biography

René Girard is Professor Emeritus of French at Stanford University. He is the author of many books, including Violence and the Sacred (1977), The Scapegoat (1986), Job: The Victim of His People (Stanford, 1987), Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, 1987), and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (2001).

Table of Contents

Editor's Note	vi
Editor's Introduction: Imitating Oedipus	vii
1 From the Novelistic Experience to the Oedipal Myth	1	(27)
2 Oedipus Analyzed	28	(31)
3 Symmetry and Dissymmetry in the Myth of Oedipus	59	(36)
4 Doubles and the Pharmakos: Levi-Strauss, Frye, Derrida, and Shakespeare	95	(12)
5 The Myth of Oedipus, the Truth of Joseph	107	(8)
Notes	115