Since the publication of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (Tr. by Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1965), French original: Mensonge romantique et verit6 romanesque (Paris: Grasset, 1961)), Rene Girard has been tirelessly expanding and expounding his theory of triangular or mimetic desire. In this first book he claims that triangular desire is the key to a true understanding of the novels of authors like Cervantes, Stendhal, Dostoevsky and Proust. In his next major theoretical work, Violence and the Sacred (Tr. by Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1977), French original: La violence et le sacr6 (Paris: Grasset, 1972)) he transports his triangle into the fields of anthropology and religion. Girard now maintains that triangular desire can explain all sacrificial rituals and religious beliefs concerning victims and scapegoats. At the end of Violence and the Sacred he promises further developments of his theory, and he does not fail us: in 1978 he publishes Des choses cachees depuis ia fondation du monde: Recherches avec Jean-Michel Oughourlian et Guy Lefort (Paris: Grasset, 1978). Here Girard reads the Old and the New Testaments in the light of his theories and also seeks to prove that his insight into the nature of desire is considerably superior to Freud's. By this point, Girard is laying claim to total and universal validity for his theories.