René Girard and Classics – Greece
A bibliography
The following texts in English apply, discuss or criticize René Girard's theoretical approach. Inclusion in the list (or inclusion of a link) does not necessarily imply endorsement of a given text. Readers may suggest additional references through the contact page of this website.
Aeschylus
Stefan Paul Dolgert. “Citizen Canine: Humans and Animals in Athens and America.” PhD diss. Duke University, 2009
Frederick T. Griffiths, “Girard on the Greeks/The Greeks on Girard,” Berkshire Review, Vol. 14, 1979, pp. 20-36
Frederick T. Griffiths, "Murder, Purification, and Cultural Formation in Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius," Helios, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1990, pp. 25-40
Peter T. Koper, “‘Reasons’ as Deferral: The Dramatization of Argument in The Eumenides,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall 2007
Wolfgang Palaver, “Mimesis and Nemesis: The Economy as a Theological Problem,” Telos, No. 117, 1999, pp. 79-112 [see “Aeschylus’ Political Theology,” pp. 87-90]
Carl Rubino, review of La Violence et le Sacré [in which Rubino extends Girard’s analysis to the Oresteia], MLN, Vol. 87, No. 7, Dec. 1972, pp. 986-98
Anaximander
Eric Gans, “Pre-Socratics II: Heraclitus and Anaximander,” Chronicles of Love & Resentment, No. 373, May 2, 2009
Aristotle
Cesareo Bandera. The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction [see Part 2: “Beyond Aristotle”]. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994
Per Bjørnar Grande. Mimesis and Desire: An Analysis of the Religious Nature of Mimesis and Desire in the Work of René Girard. Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009
Nidesh Lawtoo, “Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious (Part One): The Cathartic Hypothesis: Aristotle, Freud, Girard,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 25, 2018, pp. 159-91
Wolfgang Palaver, “Mimesis and Nemesis: The Economy as a Theological Problem,” Telos, No. 117, 1999, pp. 79-112 [see “Aristotle’s Philosophy of Nemesis,” pp. 90-93]
Wolfgang Palaver. René Girard’s Mimetic Theory [see Chapter 3: “Mimetic Desire,” passim]. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013
Matthew Schneider, “Sacred Ambivalence: Mimetology in Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring/Summer 1995
Cezary Zalewski, “From ‘Catharsis in the Text’ to ‘Catharsis of the Text’: ‘A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics’ by Roman Ingarden in the (Critical) Light of Mimetic Theory,” Forum Philosophicum, Vol. 25, No. 2, Autumn 2020, pp. 323-39
Dionysus
See Euripides
Epicurus
Anthony W. Bartlett, “The Swerve of Desire: Epicurus, Economics and Violence,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, Vol. 58, No. 2, Apr.-Jun. 2002, pp. 319-32
Euripides
Deborah Boedeker, “Becoming Medea: Assimilation in Euripides,” in Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art, ed. James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 127-148
Erika Fischer-Lichte. Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides' The Bacchae in a Globalizing World. Chichester: Wiley/Blackwell, 2014
Helene P. Foley, “The Masque of Dionysus” [on the Bacchae], Transactions of the American Philological Association 110, 1980, pp. 107-33
Helene P. Foley. Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985 (Open Access since 2019)
Giuseppe Fornari, “Labyrinthine Strategies of Sacrifice: The Cretans by Euripides,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 4, Spring 1997, pp. 163-88
Giuseppe Fornari. Dionysus, Christ, and the Death of God, Vol. 1: The Great Mediations of the Classical World. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2021
René Girard, “Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred” [on the Bacchae], tr. Sandor Goodhart, boundary 2, Vol. 5, No. 2, Winter, 1977, pp. 487-506
René Girard, “Dionysus” [on the Bacchae], Chapter 5 in Girard, Violence and the Sacred, tr. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Pres, 1977), pp. 119-42; see also the following chapter, pp. 143-44, 161-65
Barbara E. Goff. The Noose of Words: Readings of Desire, Violence and Language in Euripides’ Hippolytos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990
Frederick T. Griffiths, “Girard on the Greeks/The Greeks on Girard,” Berkshire Review, Vol. 14, 1979, pp. 20-36
Patricia Klindienst Joplin, “The Voice of the Shuttle is Ours” [on Iphigenia in Aulis], Stanford Literature Review 1, 1984, pp. 25-53; reprinted in Rape and Representation, ed. Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda A. Silver (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 35-64; reprinted in Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World, ed. Laura K. McClure (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 257-92
Robin N. Mitchell, “Miasma, Mimesis, and Scapegoating in Euripides' Hippolytus,” Classical Antiquity, Vol. 10, No. 1, April 1991, pp. 97-122
Thalia Papadopoulou, “Ritual and Violence,” Chapter 1 in Papadopoulou, Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 9-57
Dietmar Regensburger, “‘Are you still in the mood for killing?’ Mimetic Rivalry, Scapegoating and Sacrifice in Hitchcock’s Marnie, Cacoyannis’ Zorba the Greek and Pasolini’s Medea,” in Passions in Economy, Politics, and the Media, ed. Wolfgang Palaver and Petra Steinmair-Pösel (Münster: LIT, 2005), pp. 363-85
Charles Segal, “Euripides' Bacchae: Conflict and Mediation,” Ramus 6, 1977, pp. 103-120
Charles Segal, “Forms of Dionysus: Doubling, Hunting, Rituals,” Chapter 2 in Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982, expanded edition 1997), pp. 27-53
Heraclitus
Eric Gans, “Pre-Socratics II: Heraclitus and Anaximander,” Chronicles of Love & Resentment, No. 373, May 2, 2009
Herodotus
Jacob Stern, “Scapegoat Narratives in Herodotus,” Hermes, Vol. 119, No. 3, 1991, pp. 304-11
Hesiod
Giosue Ghisalberti, “Prometheus in Hesiod’s Theogony,” Chapter 3 in Ghisalberti, Animal Sacrifice and the Death Penalty (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2021), pp. 84-114
Wolfgang Palaver, “Mimesis and Nemesis: The Economy as a Theological Problem,” Telos, No. 117, 1999, pp. 79-112 [see “Hesiod’s Economic Theology,” pp. 79-87]
Homer
Mark R. Anspach, “Trying to Stop the Trojan War: Prophesying Violence, Seeing Peace,” Western Humanities Review, Vol. 62, No. 3, Fall 2008, pp. 86-97; reprinted as Chapter 3 in Anspach, Vengeance in Reverse: The Tangled Loops of Violence, Myth, and Madness (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), pp. 27-39
Gil Bailie, “Sacrificial Violence in Homer’s Iliad,” in Curing Violence, ed. Mark I. Wallace and Theophus H. Smith (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1994), pp. 45-70
Cesareo Bandera. A Refuge of Lies: Reflections on Faith and Fiction [see chapters 2-3 on the Iliad]. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013
Stefan Paul Dolgert. “Citizen Canine: Humans and Animals in Athens and America.” PhD diss. Duke University, 2009
Margo Kitts, “Sacrificial Violence in the Iliad,” Journal of Ritual Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2002, pp. 19-39
Margo Kitts, “Mimetic Theory, Sacrifice, and the Iliad?” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Vol. 45, No. 3–4, 2016, pp. 46–57
Peter T. Koper, “The Girl by the Water: Images of Aphrodite as Mediated Desire,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall 2003/Winter 2004
Rachel Hart Lesser. "Listening for the Plot: The Role of Desire in the Iliad’s Narrative." PhD diss. University of California at Berkeley, 2015
Christopher S. Morrissey, “‘Pomo Homer’: A Review of the Troy Movie,” Chronicles of Love & Resentment, No. 304, June 26, 2004
Michael N. Nagler, “Odysseus: The Proem and the Problem,” Classical Antiquity, Vol. 9, No. 2, Oct. 1990, pp. 335-56
Charles Segal, “Sacrifice and Violence in the Myth of Meleager and Heracles: Homer, Bacchylides, Sophocles,” Helios 17, 1990, pp. 7-24
Mihoko Suzuki. Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992
W. G. Thalmann, “Thersites: Comedy, Scapegoats, and Heroic Ideology in the Iliad,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 118, 1988, pp. 1-28
Geert Van Coillie, “Homer on Competition: Mimetic Rivalry, Sacrificial Violence and Autoimmunity in Nietzsche,” Bijdragen, International Journal in Philosophy and Theology, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 115-31
Medea
Deborah Boedeker, “Becoming Medea: Assimilation in Euripides,” in Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art, ed. James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 127-148
Dietmar Regensburger, “‘Are you still in the mood for killing?’ Mimetic Rivalry, Scapegoating and Sacrifice in Hitchcock’s Marnie, Cacoyannis’ Zorba the Greek and Pasolini’s Medea,” in Passions in Economy, Politics, and the Media, ed. Wolfgang Palaver and Petra Steinmair-Pösel (Münster: LIT, 2005), pp. 363-85
Christa Wolf, Medea: A Modern Retelling [Medea reimagined as a scapegoat, with quotations from Girard], tr. John Cullen, introduction by Margaret Atwood. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2005
Medusa
Tobin Siebers. The Mirror of Medusa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983
Oedipus
See Sophocles
Persephone
Ann W. Astell, "The Earthquake of 1906, the Christian Anarchy of Dorothy Day, and the Opened 'Tomb' of René Girard," Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 15/16, 2008-2009, pp. 19-43 [on the story of Persephone as an earthquake myth, see pp. 21-22]
Philostratus
René Girard, “The Horrible Miracle of Apollonius of Tyana,” Chapter 4 in Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, tr. James G. Williams (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 49-61
Pindar
Vincent Farenga, “Violent Structure: The Writing of Pindar’s Olympian I,” Arethusa, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1977, pp. 197-218
Plato
Cesareo Bandera. The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction [see Part 1: “Beyond Plato”]. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994
Sherwood Belangia, “Metaphysical Desire in Girard and Plato,” Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2010, pp. 197-209
Stefan Paul Dolgert. “Citizen Canine: Humans and Animals in Athens and America.” PhD diss. Duke University, 2009
George Dunn, “Philosophy and Revelation: Plato’s Challenge to Girard,” paper presented on July 9, 2015 in St. Louis, MO at the 25th annual conference of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion
Raphael Foshay, “Mimesis in Plato’s Republic and Its Interpretation by Girard and Gans,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 15, No. 1, Fall 2009
Raphael Foshay, “The Platonic and Aristotelian Mimetic Paradigms In Light of Gans and Heidegger,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring 2014
Eric Gans, “Plato and The Birth of Conceptual Thought,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1996/Winter 1997
Per Bjørnar Grande. Mimesis and Desire: An Analysis of the Religious Nature of Mimesis and Desire in the Work of René Girard. Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009
Per Bjørnar Grande, “Comparing Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's” (girardstudies.com)
Jacob Howland, “Plato’s Apology as Tragedy,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 70, No. 4, Fall 2008, pp. 519-46
Marian Kiss, “Mimesis, Plato and René Girard: Interpretation of the Phenomenon of ‘Mimesis’ in Plato’s ‘Constitution’ in Term’s of Girard’s Mimetic Theory,” Filosoficky Casopis, Vol. 58, No. 4, 2010, pp. 503-26
Nidesh Lawtoo. The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious [see "Nietzsche's Platonism," pp. 52-68]. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013.
Nidesh Lawtoo, “Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious (Part Two): The Contagious Hypothesis: Plato, Affect, Mirror Neurons,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 26, 2019, pp. 123–60.
Wolfgang Palaver. René Girard’s Mimetic Theory [see Chapter 3: “Mimetic Desire,” passim]. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013
Lucien Scubla, "Hierarchy of the Sexes and Hierarchy of Knowledge, or Plato among the Baruya," Chapter 11 in Scubla, Giving Life, Giving Death: Psychoanalysis, Anthropology, Philosophy (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016), pp. 191-202
Michel Serres, “Origin of Geometry, IV,” diacritics, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 1978, pp. 24-30
Tobin Siebers, “Philosophy and Its Other–Violence: A Survey of Philosophical Repression From Plato to Girard,” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1995/Winter 1996
Wm. Blake Tyrrell. The Sacrifice of Socrates: Athens, Plato, Girard. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012
Porphyry
Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Frieda S. Brown, “The Ideology of Sacrifice in Mythmaking” [with an analysis of Porphyry’s description of the Bouphonia in On Abstaining from Living Things], in Tyrrell and Brown, Athenian Myths and Institutions: Words in Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 73-98
Sacrifice
Giuseppe Fornari, “Labyrinthine Strategies of Sacrifice: The Cretans by Euripides,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 4, Spring 1997, pp. 163-88
Fritz Graf, “One Generation after Burkert and Girard: Where Are the Great Theories?” in Greek and Roman Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Fred Naiden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 32-51
Margo Kitts, “Mimetic Theory, Sacrifice, and the Iliad?” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Vol. 45, No. 3–4, 2016, pp. 46–57
Thalia Papadopoulou, “Ritual and Violence,” Chapter 1 in Papadopoulou, Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 9-57
Charles Segal, “Sacrifice and Violence in the Myth of Meleager and Heracles: Homer, Bacchylides, Sophocles,” Helios 17, 1990, pp. 7-24
Wm. Blake Tyrrell. The Sacrifice of Socrates: Athens, Plato, Girard. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012, pp. 41-55
Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Frieda S. Brown, “The Ideology of Sacrifice in Mythmaking” in Tyrrell and Brown, Athenian Myths and Institutions: Words in Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 73-98
Sophocles
Gabriel Andrade, “The Transformation of Kinship in the New Testament” [with introductory remarks on Antigone], Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2005
Mark R. Anspach, “Editor’s Introduction: Imitating Oedipus,” in René Girard, Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. vii-liv; the first 20 pages of this text are reprinted in The Oedipus Casebook, ed. Mark R. Anspach (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020), pp. 219-43
Emanuele Antonelli, “The Child of Fortune: Envy and the Constitution of the Social Space” [the “child of Fortune” is Sophocles’ Oedipus], Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 20, 2013, pp. 117-40
Cynthia Chase, “Oedipal Textuality: Reading Freud's Reading of Oedipus,” diacritics, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1979, pp. 53-68
Richard Cocks, “Oedipus Rex in René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred,” VoegelinView, June 16, 2020
Richard Cocks, “The Oedipus Casebook,” VoegelinView, July 7, 2021
Jennifer Cooke, "Oedipus the Pharmakos and the Psychoanalytic Plague," Chapter 3 in Cooke, Legacies of Plague in Literature, Theory and Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 73-96
Khegan M. Delport, “The Fall and Rise of King Oedipus: On Sacrificial Logic and ‘Proto-Christology’,”
Stellenbosch Theological Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2021, pp. 1-25
Eric Gans, “Form Against Content: René Girard's Theory of Tragedy” [with special attention to Oedipus the King], Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 56, Jan.-June 2000, pp. 53-65
René Girard, “Oedipus and the Surrogate Victim,” Chapter 3 in Girard, Violence and the Sacred, tr. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Pres, 1977), pp. 68-88; reprinted in The Oedipus Casebook, ed. Mark R. Anspach (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020), pp. 245-67
René Girard, “Oedipus and Job,” Chapter 6 in Girard, Job: The Victim of His People, tr. Yvonne Freccero (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 33-40; see also the following chapter, pp. 45-46
René Girard. Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire, ed. Mark R. Anspach. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004
Sandor Goodhart, “Lêistas Ephaske: Oedipus and Laius’ Many Murderers,” diacritics, Vol. 8, no. 1, March 1978, pp. 55-71; reprinted in Goodhart, Sacrificing Commentary: Reading the End of Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996), pp. 13-41; reprinted in The Oedipus Casebook, ed. Mark R. Anspach (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020), pp. 393-420
Sandor Goodhart, “Oedipus and Greek Tragedy,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion, ed. James Alison and Wolfgang Palaver (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 151-57
R. Drew Griffith, “Oedipus Pharmakos? Alleged Scapegoating in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King,” Phoenix, Vol. 47, No. 2, 1993, pp. 95–114 [for a brief but effective reply to Griffith, see Jennifer Cooke, "Oedipus the Pharmakos and the Psychoanalytic Plague" (full reference above), p. 195, note 17]
Frederick T. Griffiths, “Girard on the Greeks/The Greeks on Girard,” Berkshire Review, Vol. 14, 1979, pp. 20-36
Joel Hodge, “‘Dead or Banished’: A Comparative Reading of the Stories of King Oedipus and King David,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2006, pp. 189-215
Daniel Hogg, “The Oedipus Casebook: Reading Sophocles' Oedipus the King,” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021
Peter T. Koper, “Myth and Investigation in Oedipus Rex,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 12-13, 2006, pp. 87-98
Peter T. Koper, “‘Reasons’ as Deferral: The Dramatization of Argument in The Eumenides,” [see section IV: “Originary Insight in Oedipus Rex”], Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall 2007
Pietro Pucci, “The Tragic Pharmakos of the Oedipus Rex,” Helios, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1990, pp. 41-50
Robert J. Rabel, “Oedipus in Provence: Jean De Florette and Manon of the Spring” [in the light of the Oedipus Tyrannus], Helios, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2009, pp. 67-80
Martha J. Reineke. Intimate Domain: Desire, Trauma, and Mimetic Theory [see Part 2: “Antigone”]. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014.
Peter L. Rudnytsky, “Oedipus and Anti-Oedipus,” World Literature Today, Vol. 56, No. 3, Summer, 1982, pp. 462-470
Charles Segal, “Sacrifice and Violence in the Myth of Meleager and Heracles: Homer, Bacchylides, Sophocles,” Helios 17, 1990, pp. 7-24
Marian Tataru, “Consilience, Abduction, and Mimetic Theory: An Epistemological Inquiry into René Girard’s Interpretation of the Oedipus Myth,” Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2017, pp. 39-56
Wm. Blake Tyrrell (translator), Oedipus Tyrannus, in The Oedipus Casebook, ed. Mark R. Anspach (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020), pp. 1-125
Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett, “Sophocles’ Enemy Sisters: Antigone and Ismene,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 15/16, 2008-2009, pp. 1-18
Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Frieda S. Brown, “The Ideology of Sacrifice in Mythmaking” [with an extended analysis of Sophocles’ Ajax], in Tyrrell and Brown, Athenian Myths and Institutions: Words in Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 73-98
Geert Van Coillie, “Antigone: Mimetic Violence, Tragedy, and Ethics,” Ethical Perspectives, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2008, pp. 81-102
Theocritus
Mark Payne. Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007