This paper aims at reading James Joyce``s "Araby" from the Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective. It argues that the boy``s unrewarded love toward Mangan``s sister is the boy``s effort to inscribe his desire and subjectivity within the urban space of Dublin that is paralyzed and alienated/alienating. In contrast to the boy``s uncle who represents Dublin bourgeois life in "brown imperturbable faces," Mangan``s sister symbolizes the promise of the urban life, luring the boy into the commercial culture of the city. However, his love with Mangan``s sister or the desire for seamless integration into the space of Dublin is structurally unattainable because Dublin, the paralyzed city, does not allow such a thing as a harmonious unity between its space and its citizens. Joyce expresses this impossibility by framing the story in the form of courtly love. According to Lacan, courtly love is parasitic on the fundamental impossibility because the lady in question is not a woman with materiality but what he calls das Ding－or a screen on which a man projects his narcissistic fantasy. The boy``s fantasy should disguise the traumatic truth－his love is not impossible but just is impeded by the "throng of foes" that are "hostile to romance." The boy``s misrecognition leads him into an endless cycle of desire and lack, or what he calls "vanity."