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Fifty years after its publication in English, René Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1965) has never ceased to fascinate, challenge, inspire, and sometimes irritate, literary scholars. It has become one of the great classics of literary criticism, and the notion of triangular desire is now part of the theoretical parlance among critics and students. It also represents the genetic starting point for what has become one of the most encompassing, challenging, and far-reaching theories conceived in the humanities in the last century: mimetic theory. This book provides a forum for new generations of scholars and critics to reassess, challenge, and expand the theoretical and hermeneutical reach of key issues brought forward by Girard’s book, including literary knowledge, realism and representation, imitation and the anxiety of influence, metaphysical desire, deviated transcendence, literature and religious experience, individualism and modernity, and death and resurrection. It also provides a more extensive and detailed historical understanding of the representation of desire, imitation, and rivalry within European and world literature, from Dante to Proust and from Dickens to Jonathan Littell.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title page, Copyright
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  1. Contents
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. p. vii
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. ix-liii
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  1. Part One. Theoretical Considerations
  1. Jealousy and Novelistic Knowledge
  2. Maria DiBattista
  3. pp. 3-16
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  1. Desiring Proust: Girard against Deleuze
  2. Alessia Ricciardi
  3. pp. 17-38
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  1. Within and Beyond Mimetic Desire
  2. Luca Di Blasi
  3. pp. 39-54
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  1. On Girard’s Biblical Realism
  2. Karen S. Feldman
  3. pp. 55-68
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  1. Creative Renunciation: The Spiritual Heart of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel
  2. Wolfgang Palaver
  3. pp. 69-78
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  1. Part Two. Mimetic Hermeneutics in History
  1. The Desire to Be You: The Discourse of Praise for the Roman Emperor
  2. Marco Formisano
  3. pp. 81-100
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  1. René Girard and (Medieval) Sanctity: A Reappraisal
  2. Bill Burgwinkle
  3. pp. 101-112
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  1. Dubbiosi Disiri: Mimetic Processes in Dante’s Comedy
  2. Manuele Gragnolati, Heather Webb
  3. pp. 113-132
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  1. For a Comparative Topography of Desire: Mimetic Theory and the World Map
  2. Rosa Mucignat
  3. pp. 133-146
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  1. Nobody’s Fault: Dickens, René Girard, and the Novel
  2. David Quint
  3. pp. 147-160
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  1. “Let Us Carve Him as a Feast Fit for the Gods”: Girard and Unjust Execution in Nineteenth-Century Narrative
  2. Jan-Melissa Schramm
  3. pp. 161-174
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  1. Dostoyevsky’s Metaphysical Theater: The Underground Man and the Masochist in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel and Resurrection from the Underground
  2. Yue Zhuo
  3. pp. 175-188
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  1. Deceit, Desire, Violence, and Death in the Short Stories of Georges Bernanos
  2. Brian Sudlow
  3. pp. 189-204
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  1. Mimetic Desire in Otherworldly Narratives
  2. Laura Wittman
  3. pp. 205-218
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  1. Desire, Deceit, and Defeat in the Work of Roberto Arlt
  2. Jobst Welge
  3. pp. 219-232
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  1. Recantation without Conversion: Desire, Mimesis, and the Paradox of Engagement in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolio
  2. Christoph F. E. Holzhey
  3. pp. 233-252
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  1. Jonathan Franzen’s Novelistic Conversion
  2. Trevor Cribben Merrill
  3. pp. 253-264
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  1. Mimetic Desire and Monstrous Doubles in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones
  2. Robert Buch
  3. pp. 265-278
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  1. Appendix. Literature and Christianity: A Personal View
  2. René Girard
  3. pp. 279-290
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 291-296
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 297-303
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