When violence sacralizes the victim: perpectives of the myth in René Girard

Abstract

The purpose of the article is, through the perspective of the hatnce historian René Girard, to establish the existing dialogue between the concepts of sacredness and hatnce. Such con-cepts are hat nce a in the main myths of Classical Antiquity. From the play Oedipus Rei¸ by the Greek playwright Sophocles, it will be possible to observe a structure in the mythological narrative hat is repeated at the same time hat denounces the reality of social hat nce. This means hat the myth can point through its symbolism to reality itself. From this hat nce ation, even the sense of myth as a simple fantastic narration of origins (cosmogony and theogony) or moral-religious teaching expands into a semantics of myth as well as a denunciation of real hat nce. René Girard calls this phenomenon hat structures the narration of myths as “scapegoat”.