For a Comparative Topography of Desire: Mimetic Theory and the World Map
Loading...
Identifiers
Publication date
Start date of the public exhibition period
End date of the public exhibition period
Authors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Michigan State University Press
Metrics
Share
Export
Abstract
When Girard opposes “Romantic lies” to “novelistic truth”, in Desire, Deceit and the Novel, he is not thinking of Keats or Shelley but of the second-hand Romanticism of some literary critics whom he never names. “Romantic critics” extol Don Quixote for living his dream and admire Julien Sorel’s ambition, seeing in them the embodiment of the bogus ideals of originality and spontaneity that they cherish. Literary criticism of this kind, Girard observes, is the victim of the same form of mediated desire that controls the characters of novels