Joyce and Lacan

<p>What happens when the intellectual giant of twentieth-century literature James Joyce is made an object of consideration and cause of desire by the intellectual giant of modern psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan?</p><p>This is what <i>Joyce and Lacan </i>explores in the three closely interrelated areas of reading writing and psychoanalysis by delving into Joyce’s own relationship with psychoanalysis in his lifetime. The book concentrates primarily on his last text <i>Finnegans Wake</i> the notorious difficulty of which arises from its challenging the intellect itself and our own processes of reading. As well as the centrality of the <i>Wake</i><em> </em>concepts of Joycean ontology sanity singularity and sexuality are excavated from sustained analysis of his earliest writings onward.</p><p>To be ‘post-Joycean’ as Lacan describes it means then to be in the wake not only of Joyce but also of Lacan’s interventions on the Irish writer made in the mid-70s. It was this encounter that gave rise to concepts that have gained currency in today’s psychoanalytic theory and practice and importance in wider critical contexts. The notions of the <i>sinthome</i> <i>lalangue</i> and Lacan’s use of topology and knot theory are explored within as well as new theories being launched.</p><p>The book will be of interest to psychoanalysts literary theorists and students and teachers of literature theory or the works of Joyce and Lacan. </p>