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

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.

Table of Contents

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