Abstract: From the onset of psychoanalysis, literature has been its common topic. The change in theoretical positions and ethical concerns from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan led to the upgrading of literature from the symptom to the sinthome of the subject. Lacan theorized his literary criticism by analysing the “Joyce lesinthome”, and hence the proposition of literature as the sinthome of the subject. On the one hand, literature enacts a break-away from the imaginary and the symbolic by way of writing, and represents the subject’s jouissance of the unconscious by way of a resetting of letters through meaning reduction. On the other hand, the author enacts self-naming by way of writing, and then forms the fourth ring of the Borromean Knot in the form of sinthome, avoiding the collapse of the subject caused by its inability to be embedded in the imaginary and the symbolic. From the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, literature and other types of artistic creation share the property of sinthome. They protect the human subjecthood with “the knowledge of doing” by keeping people away from the devouring of desire.

Key words: Psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan, James Joyce, literature, sinthome