『정글의 야수』의 라캉적 읽기

Abstract

A Lacanian Reading of Henry James’s The Beast in the JungleKim, Ji-youngIs a grafting of Henry James and Jacques Lacan a scandal in literary criticism? Despite increasingly articulated rebukes on a raw combination of a critical theory and a literary text since critical theories including post-structuralism took over academic sites, the reason to read a Jamesian story from a Lacanian point of view is that the latter serves as a bright pharos for the former to come to light. This paper tries to interpret some Jamesian leitmotifs―a hidden secret, resignation, belated regret, etc.―in terms of Lacanian concepts including Phallus, lack, alienation, separation, fantasy, and objet (a). In The Beast in the Jungle, which shows a typical Jamesian quest-for-the-secret plot and stimulates a heated discussion about what the beast means, I attempt to look at the beast in terms of objet (a) as the residue of symbolization, a last remainder of the hypothetical mother-child unity, and the Thing which resists symbolization. In doing so, I try to show the encounter between James and Lacan is not an uncomfortable coexistence but a creative zone which expands the horizon of literary criticism.