This is the first book to explore the full range and import of Lacan's theory of poetry and its relationship to his understanding of the subject and historicity. Gilbert Chaitin provides a lucid and accessible study of this famously complex thinker. He shows how Lacan moves beyond the traditionally hostile polarities of mythos and logos, poetics and philosophy, to conceive of the subject as a complex interplay between symbolic systems, desire and history.

Lacan incorporates the function of historical contingency into the formation of subjectivity, a combination which in turn illuminates the role literature plays in the creation of selfhood. Lacan's metaphor of the subject, Chaitin argues, drew not only on Saussure, Jakobson, Freud, Heidegger and Hegel, but on hitherto unacknowledged influences such as Bertrand Russell and I. A. Richards.

Chaitin explores the ambiguities, contradictions and singularities of Lacan's immensely influential work to provide a definitive account of Lacan's theoretical development across the entire career.