| This dissertation uses Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to dialogue with narrative theory: it investigates, on the global level, the raison d'etre of narrative and questions, in particular, the existing narratological framework wherein the workings of plot have been discussed and apprehended. Inspired by Peter Brooks' classic Reading for the Plot (1984), this dissertation continues to forge an interconnection between human psychical dynamics and literary textual dynamics. More, it aims at reopening such a discussion of plot apropos of narrative meaning, naming gaps therein, and proposing some possible alternative terms with which to further along narrative/plot studies.;In order to accomplish the abovementioned objectives, this dissertation brings in Lacanian theory and vocabulary to rethink, among all, the role of desire in narrative vis-a-vis that in the human subject---it argues in the first place that narrative's desire is the desire of the human subject (an extension of Lacan's famous dictum, one's desire is the desire of the Other). This formulation of an underpinning argument may sound too simple, but what the human subject desires remains an ever-perplexing one. Within the context of Lacanian theory, desire is never an independent term, being self-sufficient or unrelated to the other concepts. Rather, the Lacanian notion of desire points to a web of desire that revolves around such other locutions as (and placed here in random order): the real, lack, anxiety, the pleasure principle, jouissance, the symbolic, the Other, objet petit a, mastery, limit, and freedom. Premised on the argument that narrative's desire is the desire of the human subject and on the compass of Lacanian desire, this dissertation investigates the workings of the web of desire in narrative.;Plot serves as the narrative agent that puts the web of desire---both in narrative and the human subject---in operation. Therewith posits this dissertation a way, a theory, to apprehend the psychological premise of narrative beginnings, the acting-out of narrative middles, and affective enjoyments embedded within narrative endings. Reading for the plot, this work concludes, is reading for more than pleasure. Reading for the plot is, rather, reading for the affective aesthetics of the human condition. |
