A Critical Review of René Girard’s Mythology Theory

Subject Areas : Mytho

Masood Algooneh Junqani ¹

1 - The Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, University of Isfahan

Received: 2017-10-29 Accepted : 2019-06-24 Published : 2019-06-22

Keywords: Mythology, Mimetic Desire, Ren&eacute, Girard, Literary Vriticism, Scapegoat Mechanism,

Abstract :

René Girard takes a critical approach to the James George Frazer and Claude Lévi-Strauss anthropological views. He belongs to the Freudian psychoanalytic school and the late French psychoanalysis. Girard has proposed a view about history and culture that is a novel mixture of literary criticism, mythology, psychoanalysis and religious studies. He puts forward the idea that in every myth it can be found the trace of a real violence that has changed over time; he turns to a Euhemeristic  mythological point of view which holds that objective historical violence is a constitutive component of rituals and myths of different tribes. By reading texts, he identifies symbolic signs that indicate to mimetic desire in human’s ontological and psychological structure as well as victimary process and scapegoat mechanism in the cultural foundations of different ethnic groups. Accordingly, the present article attempts to consider the origins of Girard's ideas and his arguments by using analytical-critical method. The author of the paper puts an emphasis on Girard's irrationalist points of view and criticizes his anti-Cartesian views about the "subject". Also, what he proposes as the foundation of human culture follows a blind and wild unconsciousness which is based on denial of self-conscious position of desire. 

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