How can a girl become a woman today -- an ethical woman and a member of society -- without being either a victim or a manipulator? Reflecting on this question, Juliet Flower MacCannell takes us for the first time beyond the flawed models for "becoming woman" left to us y Freud and Sade.

Having previously explored the logic of feminine sexuality, MacCannell sets out in the Hysteric's Guide to locate an ethics of the feminine. She does this by examining instances of the (often hysterical) feminine confrontation with (usually perverse) masculine subjects, confrontations that represent crucial...

It could be argued that the influence of Lacan on modern literary studies has been greater than anyone's. Lacan has historicised the universal or mythic perceptions of Freud, and thus lent a new status to literature as a cultural artefact. This book, originally published in 1986, aims to delineate the trends in the uses made of Lacan today; to examine the theoretical substructure by which his work is accommodated to literature; and to analyse the way in which his work 'models' the formal relation of the literary text to other texts, to history and to politics.