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It could be argued that the influence of Lacan on modern literary studies has been greater than anyone's. Lacan has historicised the universal or mythic perceptions of Freud, and thus lent a new status to literature as a cultural artefact. This book, originally published in 1986, aims to delineate the trends in the uses made of Lacan today; to examine the theoretical substructure by which his work is accommodated to literature; and to analyse the way in which his work 'models' the formal relation of the literary text to other texts, to history and to politics.
List of contents
Editor’s Foreword. Acknowledgements. Preface. Introduction: Lacan’s Literary Importance: Reading through Lacan. 1 The Critical Response: Readings of Lacan. Part 1: Lacan’s Culture Criticism 2 Word, Gift, Promise 3 The Critique of Narcissism: In Love with Culture 4 Lacan’s Two Dicourses: The Seminars and the Ecrits 5 The ‘Value’ of Metaphor Part 2: Splitting the Atom: The New Order 6 The Symbolic Order 7 Powering the Cultural Drive. Index
About the author
Juliet Flower MacCannell
Summary
It could be argued that the influence of Lacan on modern literary studies has been greater than anyone’s. Lacan has historicised the universal or mythic perceptions of Freud, and thus lent a new status to literature as a cultural artefact. This book, originally published in 1986, aims to delineate the trends in the uses made of Lacan today; to examine the theoretical substructure by which his work is accommodated to literature; and to analyse the way in which his work ‘models’ the formal relation of the literary text to other texts, to history and to politics.
