Violence and the Sacred is René Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred. "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 About the Author: René Girard was Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University. Two of his books, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, which was also translated by Yvonne Freccero, and Violence and the Sacred, are available from Johns Hopkins University Press. |