Literary analysis reveals how fiction rewrites ancient ritual and sacrifice
A new study of Alice Munro's short story shows how great literature can transform philosophical ideas about blame and redemption. The finding suggests that understanding how fiction reshapes cultural narratives matters for anyone tracking how meaning-making shapes public discourse and belief systems.
Originaltitel: The Girardian Event and the Literary Event: The Scapegoat and Revelation in Alice Munro's “Runaway” <em></em>
<p>Girardian philosophical and theological thinking is founded on events. Mainly the two generic events of mimetic desire and the purifying sacrifice. However, in addition there is more nuanced cognition of evental structures that becomes highlighted not least when engaging with literary texts through Girardian concepts. It is my intent here to probe deeply into Girard’s evental layers through the engagement with Alice Munro’s short story “Runaway”. We shall more closely examine the literary event as such and what it may mean in Munro’s work, but then also bring relevant insights back into Girard’s evental framework to ponder some conceptual timbres in his thinking about the scapegoat and revelation. By means of Ilai Rowner’s outline of the literary event, Munro’s short story is shown to appropriate the scapegoat event and to hand it back to the opaque realm of myth that Girard extracted it from. In addition, there will be a more philosophical elaboration of the phenomenon of the event alongside the analysis of the literary event. This part will be mainly guided by the work of François Raffoul.</p><p> </p><p> </p>