Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure

The Johns Hopkins University Press, April 1976. Paper Back. New. Do we choose our desires? To put a finer point on it, from where, or whom, do we borrow the desires we claim as our own? The French literary critic, historian and philosopher René Girard suggests--drawing upon a long line of mimetic theory including Plato, Aristotle, Coleridge, Freud, and Auerbach--that we do not experience desire spontaneously. We imitate and borrow, more often unconsciously than not. Girard terms this phenomenon the 'triangular desire.' Between the subject (doing the desiring) and the object (of that desire) is a mediator 'radiating toward both the subject and the object.' The purpose and limitations of this geometry, write Girard, always 'allude to the mystery, transparent yet opaque, of human relations.' <p><p> His analysis of the novel as a form encompasses far more than literary criticism, rendering an incisive critique of individualism and penetrating the processes of human being. Girard tracks his thesis through the work of several great novelists whose work lies on a mimetic continuum of sorts, comparing the heroes of Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust and Dostoevsky. Each embodies their own spin on the idea of triangular desire. Don Quixote's <i>Amadis</i> is imaginary, though the effect of his mediation is not. In Flaubert's <i>Madame Bovary</i>, the mediator is a flesh and blood rival--acting as both model and obstacle. Dostoevsky, 'by a stroke of genius places the mediator in the foreground and relegates the object to the background.' <p> Girard is fundamentally concerned with the idea of Choice, which 'always involves choosing a model...true freedom lies in the basic choice between a human or a divine model.' Quoting Louis Ferrero, he asserts that 'passion is the change of address of a force awakened by Christianity and oriented toward God.' All 'novelistic works of genius' (Girard) express this truth; the great writers intuitively and concretely embody their characters through the struggle with this central conflict. Girard likewise embodies his critical thought, knitting together his theory with the characters from these works and living up to his own high standards of literary criticism:<p> 'The value of a critical thought depends not on how cleverly it manages to disguise its own systematic nature or on how many fundamental issues it manages to shirk or to dissolve but on how much literary substance it really embraces, comprehends, and makes articulate.'