The Purloined Chamber: A Lacanian Reading of Richard Powers’s Plowing the Dark

Authors

  • Johanna Heil

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.133

Abstract

This article focuses on the short chapters in Richard Powers’s novel Plowing the Dark“ that describe obscure rooms which cannot easily be related to the novel’s action. Comparing these rooms to the letter in Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter,“ I propose a Lacanian interpretation of these rooms that will illuminate their character and function.

Author Biography

Johanna Heil

Johanna Heil studied American Studies, English Linguistics and Celtic Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Trinity College Dublin and received her M.A. from Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2008. She teaches American literature at Philipps-Universität Marburg and works on her Ph.D. thesis “Interfaces of Science, Technology, and the Arts in Selected Works by Richard Powers“ (working title). Her research interests include postmodern and contemporary fiction, critical and cultural theory, interdisciplinarity, and the cognitive sciences. 

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How to Cite

Heil, Johanna. “The Purloined Chamber: A Lacanian Reading of Richard Powers’s Plowing the Dark”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 11, Mar. 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.133.

Issue

Vol. 11 (2010)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.

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