Lacan and E. A. Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”: A Psychoanalytic Reading to the Letter

Abstract

In his seminar on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter,” Jacques Lacan underscores the insistence of the signifier and the primacy of the symbolic order in the constitution of subjectivity. This Lacanian study constitutes a reading to the letter of how speaking subjects are possessed by the signifier, which, in the narrative, is represented by the letter itself. This circular trajectory is orchestrated by the maneuvers of Detective Dupin, whose logical tactics reveal that the true protagonist of Poe’s tale is the letter/the signifier-letter.