ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on the “disincarnated subject” created by Lacanian readers of Edgar Allan Poe and reconsiders a Poe to whom both a personal history and an individual body have been restored. This will lead us to a view of “The Purloined Letter” in which the idea of theft is accorded a concrete reality. While the idea of theft finds its way into a number of Poe’s stories, “The Purloined Letter” is unique for promoting it to an almost flamboyant centrality. “The Purloined Letter” achieves the remarkable feat of putting us in a real relation with Poe. At the heart of “The Purloined Letter” is a massive enterprise of repudiation, an enterprise in which Dupin is Poe’s representative. With women, Poe sought relationships that were comforting and sustaining, relationships, if one will, of an oral dependent type.
