Time Has Grown Short

BENOÎT CHANTRE is a French essayist and literary critic. He has authored books on the German poet Hölderlin (Le clocher de Tübingen, 2019) and René Girard (Les derniers jours de René Girard, 2016), with whom he collaborated on Battling to the End (2009).

• Contents Introduction I. From Vertical Transcendence to Deviated Transcendence II. Self-Transcendence, the Scapegoat Mechanism, and the Institution of Sacrifice III. Messianic Transcendence IV. A Mimetic Approach to the Letter to the Romans Conclusion Notes

Benoît Chantre has written a volume that masterfully lays out the three major syntheses of mimetic theory while also breaking important new ground. His eschatological reading of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans brilliantly shows the vibrant compossibilities—and the coexistence of apparent opposites—that are so central to understanding René Girard’s intellectual project.—Luke Burgis, author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday LifeBenoît Chantre has written a beautiful and profound book. He has attempted something new in Girardian research: to reread the entirety of René Girard’s thought from a few words offered toward the end of Battling to the End on médiation intime (innermost mediation), words attributed to Augustine’s Deos interior intimo meo. Chantre sees in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans the culmination of Girard’s new conception of “anthropo-theology.”—Sandor Goodhart, professor of English and Jewish studies, Purdue University