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“Ritual” in Recent Criticism: The Elusive Sense of Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Richard F. Hardin
Richard F. Hardin*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas, Lawrence
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Abstract

Since the 1960s scholars have challenged earlier assumptions concerning ritual and literature. They have seriously discredited both the “ritual theory of myth” and traditional ideas on the relation of ritual to Greek and medieval drama. Although some critics still subscribe to theories of psychoanalysis and the “Cambridge anthropological school,” current anthropology offers superior theories of ritual, particularly those of Victor Turner, with their emphasis on community. Because literature and rites have similar emotional effects we have tended to equate them, but by so doing we confuse the liminal with the “liminoid.” Modern authors influenced by Frazer often invite this comparison. Rene Girard's theories of scapegoat and civilization have provided a new, if controversial, turn to ritual criticism. Rites share their symbolic nature with art, but their peculiar satisfaction lies in the experience of community.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 5 , October 1983 , pp. 846 - 862
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

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