Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Dedication
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Desire, the Lacanian Cogito
2. Desire and Sexual Difference
3. Beyond Desire: Love, Mystic Jouissance, and the Sinthome
4. Lacan, Literary theory, and Criticism
5. Shakespeare's Theatre of Desire
6. John Donne's Hymns to Love, Desire and Jouissance
7. Joyce's Wakean Sinthome
8. The Function of the Specular Image and the Littoral in Ashbery's Poetry
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

An original study aiming to explain fully Lacanian thought and apply it to the study of literary texts.

About the Author

Ehsan Azari is a Sydney-based Afghan writer, whose writing appears in the international press, and has taught at Macquarie University, Australia.

Reviews

"Ehsan Azari has written a truly brilliant book. By explaining Lacan's various theories on desire, Mr. Azari gives an example of what a literary criticism would be within a Lacanian view of psychoanalysis. Not only is his grasp of the complexity of Lacanian theory solid and thorough, his use of literary examples is exemplary. Moreover, he situates Lacan where he belongs in relation to post-structuralist thinkers, showing what they have taken from Lacan. These critiques in themselves are worth reading the book. They are terse and correct. All in all this book is a tour de force." - Professor Ellie Ragland, Department of English, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. She is the author of The Logic of Sexuation: From Aristotle to Lacan (State University of New York Press, 2004).