Robert Lowell is known for the founder of Confessional Poems in America. He exposes his inner desire and instinct without any mask or disguise, so his poems can be researched by the psychoanalytic criticism. This paper focuses on the unconsciousness of subject and the structure of desire in Lowell’s poems. The theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek are used to interpret Lowell’s poems in Life Studies and For the Union Dead. Lacan’s psychoanalysis gives new methods to interpret various aspects of the unconsciousness in the poetry of Robert Lowell, who exposes resistance against Puritan tradition in American history and shows pathological state of self. Lacan emphasizes that the subject has a lack in nature, consequently the subject can be divided of itself. In Lowell’s poems, there is a double vision between the poetic self who appears as a subject and the other who criticizes himself in view of the Symbolic. When a sexual desire hidden in the unconsciousness may be revealed in the real abruptly, the poetic self satisfies himself through the fantasy of ‘objet a’ in “Skunk Hour”. At the same time, the gaze controlled by the symbolic would like to censor the subject who steals a glance at an obscene couple in a car; which is partially associated with voyeurism. A sinister symptom of capitalism is also involved with the spilt subject. Even though the symbolic is constructed by the name of the Father and the law, it can be easily subverted by invasion of erotic ‘objet a’ in his poems. Sometimes he is identical with the monster which is menace to the others, meanwhile he is often fascinated by erotic female monster like Gorgon. As a grotesque and an erotic monster, she suggests the sublime of the dark abyss within the Superego. The poetic self of Lowell is troubled in his mind to decide whether he should enter the symbolic or subvert it, so he shows ambiguous attitude to others.

Robert Lowell is known for the founder of Confessional Poems in America. He exposes his inner desire and instinct without any mask or disguise, so his poems can be researched by the psychoanalytic criticism. This paper focuses on the unconsciousness of subject and the structure of desire in Lowell’s poems. The theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek are used to interpret Lowell’s poems in Life Studies and For the Union Dead. Lacan’s psychoanalysis gives new methods to interpret various aspects of the unconsciousness in the poetry of Robert Lowell, who exposes resistance against Puritan tradition in American history and shows pathological state of self. Lacan emphasizes that the subject has a lack in nature, consequently the subject can be divided of itself. In Lowell’s poems, there is a double vision between the poetic self who appears as a subject and the other who criticizes himself in view of the Symbolic. When a sexual desire hidden in the unconsciousness may be revealed in the real abruptly, the poetic self satisfies himself through the fantasy of ‘objet a’ in “Skunk Hour”. At the same time, the gaze controlled by the symbolic would like to censor the subject who steals a glance at an obscene couple in a car; which is partially associated with voyeurism. A sinister symptom of capitalism is also involved with the spilt subject. Even though the symbolic is constructed by the name of the Father and the law, it can be easily subverted by invasion of erotic ‘objet a’ in his poems. Sometimes he is identical with the monster which is menace to the others, meanwhile he is often fascinated by erotic female monster like Gorgon. As a grotesque and an erotic monster, she suggests the sublime of the dark abyss within the Superego. The poetic self of Lowell is troubled in his mind to decide whether he should enter the symbolic or subvert it, so he shows ambiguous attitude to others.

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