—. I am grateful to Ann Ferguson, Tamsin Lorraine, Linda Podheiser, Andreas Teuber, Dan Warren and Tom Wartenberg for their comments; I must also thank an anonymous referee. In addition, I have learned much from the discussion of related materials in Stanley Cavell's seminar at Harvard on psychoanalysis and literary theory. This essay is dedicated to Pierre Pellegrin, who has helped me to improve my understanding of French psychoanalytic thought on these topics.

1 Henceforward references to this volume will cite it as “FS”, with the page number. Other works influenced by Lacan include the French feminists represented in Marks and Courtivron, eds. 1980, and the literary critics in Felman, ed. 1982. For convenience I refer to other of Lacan's translated writings according to the following method of coded abbreviations: “Écrits” designates Ecrils, A Selection, Sheridan, tr., 1977; and “4Concepts” designates TheFour Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Miller, ed.,1978.

2 Coverdale's ironical manner makes it especially hard to discern the author's attitude to the feminist issues he discusses in this novel.

3 See Aristophanes’ story in Plato's Symposium, 189c-193e, especially 190d-e.