Mimetic Desires in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur Barbara Kowalik University of Warsaw, Poland ABSTRACT: This article draws upon René Girard’s concept of desire to elucidate the nature of personal relationships in Thomas Malory’s Arthuriad. Girard observes that all human desire beyond biologically grounded appetites is imitative rather than unique in nature. In particular, he demystifies romantic love, arguing that it originates in the imitation of another’s desire, in longing for what another is and has. Girard believes that “literary criticism should help to uncover the mimetic nature of desire” in its innumerable combinations, and that “each writer demands an entirely different demonstration” (2008: 77, 174). This article traces Malory’s configurations of love and friendship via Girard’s mimetic model. KEYWORDS: Thomas Malory’s Arthuriad, social mimesis, mimetic fever, mimetic triangle 1. René Girard’s concept of mimetic desire Girard’s account of human desire rests on the assumption that people want things chiefly because others, especially their peers, neighbors, and fellows have or want them. In his view, desire does not originate in the autonomous self, as the Romantics would have it. While admitting that it is “the main instrument human beings have to explore and make sense of the world” (2008: 5), Girard emphasizes its negative aspects, which in his opinion tend to be underestimated. The gist of his theory is that desire does not flow directly between its subject and object but focuses on its mediator, a third party close or important to the desiring self, so that we desire through another person, selon l’Autre, rather than from our own self, selon Soi. Girard believes that people borrow their longings from those they admire, respect, and compete with. He further distinguishes between external and internal imitation. The former, exemplified by Don Quixote, presupposes a substantial distance between the subject and the mediator, who is situated outside of the subject’s contextual domain, typically in the sphere of broadly understood literature so that their respective fields of possible achievement do not overlap. In the case of internal
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