Ritual unbound

"This study explores the vestiges of primitive sacrificial rituals that emerge in a group of canonical modernist novels. It argues that these novels reenact a process that achieved its seminal expression in the Genesis story of "The Binding of Isaac," in which Abraham, prevented from sacrificing Isaac, offers up a ram in his place. Abraham's gesture breaks with the archaic practice of human sacrifice but implies the necessity of finding a substitute victim."--BOOK JACKET.