This is the first book to explore Lacan's theory of poetry and its relationship to his understanding of the subject and historicity. Gilbert Chaitin's lucid and accessible study of this famously complex thinker shows how Lacan moves beyond the traditionally hostile polarities of poetics and philosophy. For Lacan, the subject is a complex interplay among psychoanalysis, rationality and history, a combination that enabled him to illuminate literature's role in the creation of selfhood. The ambiguities, contradictions and singularities in Lacan are explored in this definitive account of the theoretical development across his entire career.