The Girard Reader Read Free Page A

in his thinking is to grasp the essential
    argument of Violence and the Sacred .
    In 1971 Girard accepted a distinguished professor position at the State University of New
    York at Buffalo, where he remained until 1976. During this period he became a close friend
    of Cesáreo Bandera, now University Distinguished Professor of Spanish Literature at the
    University of North Carolina. Bandera was and has remained an important conversation
    partner for Girard. In 1972 La violence et le sacré was published in France (in English
    Violence and the Sacred , 1977). He had published scarcely anything on Christianity and the
    Bible, but that was about to change, and a new stage of his career was imminent as he left
    SUNY/ Buffalo in 1976.
    In 1976 Girard accepted a second appointment at Johns Hopkins University, with the title of
    John M. Beall Professor of the Humanities. The English translation of La violence et le sacré
    came out in 1977, and for the first time he became the subject of reviews, interviews, and
    scholarly forums in North America. Violence and the Sacred is the one work by Girard that
    many American scholars have read, although some literary critics have read only Deceit,
    Desire, and the Novel .
    The most important book Girard has produced appeared in French in 1978, Des choses
    cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World) . In
    the form of a dialogue with two
    -3-
    psychiatrists, Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, its format is a triptych: (1)
    Fundamental Anthropology, (2) The Judeo-Christian Scriptures, (3) Interdividual
    Psychology. In this book Girard declared himself, in effect, as a Christian and advocated a
    nonsacrificial reading of the Gospels and the divinity of Christ. In France he was a cause
    célèbre or a bête noire , because his argument for a universal anthropological theory,
    combined with the position that the deepest insights of Western culture stem from biblical
    revelation, shocked and alienated those who held to the assumption of the all-encompassing
    nature of language and who tended to ignore Christianity or view it with contempt. However,
    for many who were seeking a way to affirm the reality of human experience as a referent
    outside of language or for those who were searching for a way of talking about the biblical
    God of history, his clear concepts and outspoken positioning of himself against fashionable
    intellectual modes came across as the discovery of treasure hidden in a field.
    This public discussion of Girard's work happened primarily in France, and to some extent in
    other European countries. Due to the impact of Things Hidden , there was a new reading
    audience for Violence and the Sacred . Interest in Girard and the spread of his influence have
    come about more slowly in North America. The translation of Things Hidden , published by
    Stanford University Press in 1987, was a signal step forward. Another was the formation of
    the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, to which I will return shortly.
    In 1981 Girard accepted his next and last post, that of Andrew B. Hammond Professor of
    French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University. These years until his
    retirement in 1995 saw the appearance of Le bouc émissaire ( 1982), published in English as
    The Scapegoat by Johns Hopkins ( 1986); La route antique des hommes pervers ( 1985), put out by Athlone and Stanford as Job: The Victim of His People ( 1987); A Theater of Envy:
    William Shakespeare ( 1991), translated into French as Shakespeare: Les feux de Venvie , which actually appeared in 1990, before the English original; and a very important set of
    interviews, Quand ces choses commenceront . . . Entretiens avec Michel Treguer (When these
    things will begin . . . Conversations with Michel Treguer) , published by arléa in 1994. Also,
    as already mentioned, the English version of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the
    World appeared in 1987.
    Stanford