Figuring Lacan (RLE Lacan) Criticism and the Unconscious [Paperback]

It could be argued that the influence of Lacan on modern literary studies has been greater than anyones. 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.

Editors Foreword.  Acknowledgements.  Preface.  Introduction: Lacans Literary Importance: Reading throughLacan.  1 The Critical Response: Readings ofLacan.  Part 1: Lacans Culture Criticism  2 Word, Gift, Promise  3 The Critique of Narcissism: In Love with Culture  4 Lacans Two Dicourses: The Seminarsand 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