Fictive Ritual explores the ritual dimensions of literary fiction, drama, and autobiography. Among the works it considers are Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, Jean Genet's The Blacks: A Clown Show, Elie Wiesel's Gates of the Forest, Jean-Paul Sartre's The Words, Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro, and Soren Kierkegaard's Repetition."