Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons : : The Unconscious Meanings of Crime and Punishment / / Martha Grace Duncan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Duncan, Martha Grace,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [1996]; ©1996
• Year of Publication: 1996
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface and Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; PART ONE. Cradled on the Sea: Positive Images of Prison and Theories of Punishment --; CHAPTER 1. A Thousand Leagues Above: Prison As a Refuge from the Prosaic --; CHAPTER 2. Cradled on the Sea: Prison As a Mother Who Provides and Protects --; CHAPTER 3. To Die and Become: Prison As a Matrix of Spiritual Rebirth --; CHAPTER 4. Flowers Are Flowers: Prison As a Place Like Any Other --; CHAPTER 5. Methodological Issues --; CHAPTER 6. Positive Images of Prison and Theories of Punishment --; Epilogue to Part One --; PART TWO. A Strange Liking: Our Admiration for Criminals --; Prologue to Part Two --; CHAPTER 7. Reluctant Admiration: The Forms of Our Conflict over Criminals --; CHAPTER 8. Rationalized Admiration: Overt Delight in Camouflaged Criminals --; CHAPTER 9. Repressed Admiration: Loathing As a Vicissitude of Attraction to Criminals --; Conclusion to Part Two: This Unforeseen Partnership --; PART THREE. In Slime and Darkness: The Metaphor of Filth in Criminal Justice --; Prologue to Part Three --; CHAPTER 10. Eject Him Tainted Now: The Criminal As Filth in Western Cultu --; CHAPTER 11. Projecting an Excrementitious Mass: The Metaphor of Filth in the History of Botany Bay --; CHAPTER 12. Stirring the Odorous Pile: Vicissitudes of the Metaphor in Britain and the United States --; Conclusion to Part Three: Metaphor Understood --; Conclusion: The Romanticization of Criminals and the Defense against Despair --; Appendix --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780814721100; 9783110716924
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Martha Grace Duncan.

An ex-convict struggles with his addictive yearning for prison. A law-abiding citizen broods over his pleasure in violent, illegal acts. A prison warden loses his job because he is so successful in rehabilitating criminals. These are but a few of the intriguing stories Martha Grace Duncan examines in her bold, interdisciplinary book Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons. Duncan writes: "This is a book about paradoxes and mingled yarns - about the bright sides of dark events, the silver linings of sable clouds." She portrays upright citizens who harbor a strange liking for criminal deeds, and criminals who conceive of prison in positive terms: as a nurturing mother, an academy, a matrix of spiritual rebirth, or a refuge from life's trivia. In developing her unique vision, Duncan draws on literature, history, psychoanalysis, and law. Her work reveals a nonutopian world in which criminals and non-criminals--while injuring each other in obvious ways--nonetheless live together in a symbiotic as well as an adversarial relationship, needing each other, serving each other, enriching each other's lives in profound and surprising fashion.