Girard’s Works
A comprehensive, but not exhaustive, chronological annotated list of Girard’s publications, with both original and English references:
Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque. Paris: Grasset, 1961; Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Translated by Yvonne Freccero, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965.
Girard’s groundbreaking analysis of five major European novelists – Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust – who described the workings of “triangular” (which Girard would later call “mimetic”) desire, challenging the romantic claims of modern individualism.
Dostoïevski, du double à l’unité. Paris: Plon, 1963; Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky. Tranlated by James G. Williams. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012.
Girard’s study of the Russian novelist builds on the insights of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, tracing Dostoevsky’s spiritual and aesthetic journey from “underground” obsessions of pride and jealousy to a powerful religious vision.
Critique dans un souterrain. Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme, 1976.
This volume includes the previously published essay on Dostoevsky and texts on Dante, Camus, and Victor Hugo, among others.
La violence et le sacré. Paris: Grasset, 1972; Violence and the Sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
Through readings of Greek tragedy – in particular the plays of Sophocles and Euripides – and modern anthropology, Girard, expanding on the insights of Freud, posits that crisis and its violent resolution through sacrifice is the underlying common denominator of all ancient cultures.
Des Choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde. Recherches avec Jean-Michel Oughourlian et Guy Lefort. Paris: Grasset, 1978; Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Translated by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
Girard, in dialogue with psychiatrists Oughourlian and Lefort, argues that the Bible and especially the Christian gospels unveil the truth of scapegoating and correct the mendacious perspective of archaic myths, making possible both new understanding of the violent origins of humanity and the pathologies of the modern world.
To Double Business Bound»: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
This volume collects Girard’s essays on Dante, Camus, Nietzsche, Wagner, Derrida, Lévi-Strauss, and other key figures in the development of his thought, and concludes with a wide-ranging interview.
Le bouc émissaire. Paris: Grasset, 1982; The Scapegoat. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Like medieval texts of persecution, which historians read as distorted evidence of scapegoating, ancient myths and legends present their scapegoats as truly guilty, a charge the Bible rebuts through its accounts of John the Baptist’s beheading and the denial of Peter. Many view The Scapegoat as the most systematic presentation of Girard’s ideas.
La route antique des hommes pervers. Paris: Grasset, 1985; Job: The Victim of His People. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
Girard reads The Book of Job as the account of an archaic show trial, and its protagonist as the victim of an arbitrary shift in public opinion for which his “friends” serve as the sinister mouthpieces, urging him to give up his vain professions of innocence, accuse himself, and join the unanimous chorus of voices united against him.
A Theater of Envy.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991; Shakespeare, les feux de l’envie. Translated by Bernard Vincent. Paris: Grasset, 1991.
In Girard’s reading, for which he earned the Prix Médicis for best essay in France, Shakespeare shrewdly offered up villains for his audiences to hate while simultaneously pursuing a subtle and often covert meditation on mimetic desire, sacrifice, and the foundations of culture in such works as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and The Winter’s Tale.
Quand ces choses commenceront. Entretiens avec Michel Treguer.Paris: Arléa, 1994;When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer. Translated by Trevor Cribben Merrill. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014.
In this friendly yet combative series of conversations with Michel Treguer, Girard reflects on literature, God, freedom, and science while defending the main tenets of his mimetic theory.
The Girard Reader. Edited by James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad, 1996.
This volume includes key excerpts from major texts chosen, collected, and introduced by Girard’s longtime friend, translator, and collaborator James Williams – one of the best introductions to the mimetic theory.
Je vois Satan tomber comme l'éclair. Paris: Grasset, 1999; I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Translated by James G. Williams. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001.
Girard’s accessible and compact apology for Christianity suggests that the proteiform notion of “Satan” in the Gospels, often neglected today, can be read as a technical term encompassing the stages of the mimetic cycle, from mimetic desire and rivalry to accusation, murder, and misrecognition.
Celui par qui le scandale arrive: entretiens avec Maria-Stella Barberi. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001; The One By Whom Scandal Comes. Translated by Malcolm B. DeBevoise. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014.
In addition to conversations with interlocutor and editor Barberi, the volume includes three new essays by Girard on reciprocity and violence, cultural relativism and ethnocentrism, and mimetic theory and theology.
La Voix méconnue du réel: Une théorie des mythes archaïques et modernes. Paris: Grasset, 2002.
For this volume, available only in French, editor Bee Formentelli assembled several of the texts from To Double Business Bound, including Girard’s memorable theory of the comic, “A Perilous Balance,” and his essay on innovation and repetition.
Le sacrifice. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2003.
Girard’s lectures on the powerful insights into sacrifice in the Hindu Brahmanas paved the way for scholars to explore the themes of mimetic desire, rivalry, and sacrifice in other world religions, including Islam and Buddhism.
Verità o fede debole. Dialogo su cristianesimo e relativismo. Toscana: Transeuropa Edizioni, 2006;Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith. Gianni Vattimo and René Girard. Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello. Translated by William McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
A dialogue between philosopher Vattimo, known for his notion of “weak thought,” and Girard on themes of secularization, relativism, faith, and the role of Christianity in the contemporary world.
Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire. Edited by Mark Anspach. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
As this selection of Girard’s writings on Oedipus shows, the legendary king is a central figure in Girard’s work, serving as a bridge from his literary analyses to the anthropological reflections in Violence and the Sacred, and later as a point of comparison with Biblical narratives such as the story of Joseph and his brothers.
Le Tragique et la Pitié: Discours de réception de René Girard à l'Académie française et réponse de Michel Serres. Paris: Editions le Pommier, 2007.
Girard’s speech marking his reception into the French Academy eulogizes his predecessor, Father Ambroise-Marie Carré, whose work he interprets as an itinerary from fervent spiritual ambition to humility.
De la violence à la divinité(Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque; La violence et le Sacré; Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde; Le bouc émissaire). Paris: Grasset,2007.
This French volume gathers together lightly revised versions of Girard’s four major works in a single omnibus publication, along with a general introduction.
Achever Clausewitz: Entretiens avec Benoît Chantre. Paris: Carnets Nord, 2007; Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre. Translated by Mary Baker. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010.
Girard’s final major work, and the first since Deceit, Desire, and the Novelto apply mimetic theory to the contemporary world, these conversations with his French editor Benoît Chantre extend the insights of Prussian military strategist Clausewitz, who glimpsed the apocalyptic logic of modern history as an “escalation to extremes” in warfare and destructive technology.
Girard, René, Pierpaolo Antonello, and João Cezar de Castro Rocha. Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture. London: Continuum, 2007.
These interviews with two former students give Girard the opportunity to discuss his work in the context of modern anthropology and contemporary critiques of his ideas, while revisiting milestones in his early life and career – another excellent introduction to mimetic theory.
Anorexie et désir mimétique. Paris: L'Herne, 2008; Anorexia and Mimetic Desire. Translated by Mark R. Anspach. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013.
Girard applies his notion of mimetic rivalry to the phenomenon of anorexia, which he sees as a contemporary form of competitive asceticism, driven by a culture of puritanical individualism that views a slender physique as worth pursuing at any cost.
Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005. Edited by Robert Doran. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.
Editor Doran brings together several of Girard’s previously uncollected literary essays, including texts on Stendhal and Tocqueville, Chrétien de Troyes, Marivaux, and Racine.
La Conversion de l'art. Paris: Flammarion, 2010.
A sort of French counterpart to Mimesis and Theory, with which it overlaps to some extent, this volume includes a previously unpublished lecture on Wagner and mimetic desire, as well as early texts on Malraux and Saint-John Perse.
Girard, René, and Schwager, Raymund. Correspondence 1974-1991. Translated by Chris Fleming and Sheelah Treflé Hidden. Edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, Joel Hodge, and Mathias Moosbrugger. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Theologian Raymund Schwager was, after Girard himself, the most influential figure in the development of the mimetic theory, and this correspondence chronicles nearly two decades of exchanges between the two thinkers and shows the mutual influence exerted by their warm intellectual friendship.