Table of Contents

Preface
Part I. Poe and Lacan
Chapter 1. Text of "The Purloined Letter," with Notes
Chapter 2. Seminar of "The Purloined Letter"
Chapter 3. Lacan's Seminar of "The Purloined Letter" Overview
Chapter 4. Lacan's Seminar of "The Purloined Letter": Map of the Text
Chapter 5. Lacan's Seminar of "The Purloined Letter": Notes to the Text
Part II. On Psychoanalytic Reading
Chapter 6. Selections from The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-analytic Interpretation
Chapter 7. On Reading Poetry: Reflections on the Limits and Possibilities of Psychoanalytic Approaches
Part III. Derrida and Responses
Chapter 8. The Challenge of Deconstructions
Chapter 9. The Purveyor of Truth, translated by Alan Bass
Chapter 10. The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida
Chapter 11. Structures of exemplarity in Poe, Freud, Lacan, and Derrida
Chapter 12. The American other
Part IV. Other Readings
Chapter 13. Narratorial Authority and "The Purloined Letter"
Chapter 14. Re-covering "The Purloined Latter": Reading as a Personal Transaction
Chapter 15. The Shadow's Shadow: The Motif of the Double in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter"
Chapter 16. A Notes on Time in "The Purloined Letter"
Chapter 17. Negation in "The Purloined Letter": Hegel, Poe, and Lacan
References
Contributors
Index

About the Author

John P. Muller is a clinical psychologist at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. William J. Richardson is professor of philosophy at Boston College. They are coauthors of Lacan and Language: A Reader's Guide to Ecrits.

Reviews

In the story of the interpretations, reinterpretations, displacements, and replacements that have accreted around Poe's 'The Purloined Letter,' this collection, The Purloined Poe, comes like an answer to a... riddle. -- Hana Charney Psychoanalytic Books A valuable, critical text. Year's Work in English Studies A fascinating volume for both the fledgling and the besotted amateurs of contemporary criticism. Library Journal

In the story of the interpretations, reinterpretations, displacements, and replacements that have accreted around Poe's 'The Purloined Letter,' this collection, The Purloined Poe, comes like an answer to a... riddle. -- Hana Charney Psychoanalytic Books A valuable, critical text. Year's Work in English Studies A fascinating volume for both the fledgling and the besotted amateurs of contemporary criticism. Library Journal