by carefree-bob | 2026-03-03 22:15:21+00:00
I am not really interested in things like "evidence" that the gospels are consistent with Girard's examples, nor of "takedowns". That's not really how things work in comparative literature.

What you are doing in this field is re-interpreting works of literature to find common themes and shed insight on human nature by looking at these themes. The fundamental assumption here -- which is a radical assumption -- is that works of literature that are considered classic or great works of literature -- contain within them information about human nature, that is, hidden information, and this applies even to, or especially with respect to, fictional works such as Don Quixote.

As an example, you can claim children desire power. And as evidence of this, point to children's stories, reintepreting them as power fantasies. Which is basically correct. Now let's say that you are talking about Lord of the Rings, and arguing that here we have the lowly hobbit that ends up saving the whole world and Kings bow to him, you can use that as one piece of data. But now comes the "takedown", and the critic says "No! You have it wrong! The point of destroying the ring is to get rid of power! You have it all backwards". But the critic is missing the point. I hope everyone can see that. Tolkien might have been consciously warning readers about the dangers of power, but it would not have been a successful children's book if it did not involve the lead character starting out powerless, acquiring power, and being someone the child reader identified with. Or at least the odds of it being successful would be much lower. In most children's books, you are acquiring power -- because children fantasize about that, it is human nature. It does not matter what moral lesson the author is trying to get across, his human nature finds a way of expressing itself in the work.

Now, you can reject the core assumption that literature reveals aspects of human nature, it's fine, but there is no point in arguing that core assumption. If you reject it, then don't read Girard.

But if you don't reject it, then because you are re-interpreting works and looking for overlooked themes, the name of the game is to accumulate a large body of examples, not to debate a single example. And you judge the success of your examples primarily by their explanatory power, not because you think the original author intentionally made a certain theme that heretofore was overlooked.

But because you are providing novel interpretations of existing works, you can always find plenty of arguments that the original works were intended to be interpreted differently. It's trivial, but not a compelling critique. It is up to the reader to decide whether interpreting the work through this lense sheds more light on the work in the sense that applying the same interpretation to the large body of works cited results in something that "makes sense", as Girard is building a case that a certain theme in human nature occurs in works of literature over and over again, and having this theme available helps you to better understand the work.

This is very different from theology, or legalism, where people focus on debating a single verb tense in a specific verse. Because Girard is not doing theology or legalism, he is doing comparative literature, so he provides a hundred examples of common themes, and after you read him, the next time you read literature your mind is trained to look for these themes and you can identify them and interpret what you are reading in a different way.

Now going back to the original sharp assumption, this means that you do not only know something new about literature, but something new about human nature.