Jean-Michel Rabaté offers a systematic genealogy of Lacan's theory of literature, reconstructing an original doctrine based upon Freudian insights and revitalized through close readings of authors as diverse as Poe, Gide, Shakespeare, Plato, Claudel, Sophocles, Sade, Genet, Duras, and Joyce. Not simply an essay about Lacan's influences or style, this book shows how the emergence of terms like the "letter" and the "symptom" would not have been possible without innovative readings of literary texts. Lacan's critique of "applied psychoanalysis" entails a new practice of psychoanalysis understood as a type of textual reading of the Unconscious.