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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.
"Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons is a book that merits the interest of psychanalysts for the contribution it offers to our understanding of the realm of guilt and punishment in human psychology...I recommend the book highly."
-The Psychoanalytic Quarterly| Preface and Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Cradled on the Sea: Positive Images of Prison and Theories of Punishment | p. 7 |
| A Thousand Leagues Above: Prison As a Refuge from the Prosaic | p. 9 |
| Cradled on the Sea: Prison As a Mother Who Provides and Protects | p. 24 |
| To Die and Become: Prison As a Matrix of Spiritual Rebirth | p. 32 |
| Flowers Are Flowers: Prison As a Place Like Any Other | p. 38 |
| Methodological Issues | p. 44 |
| Positive Images of Prison and Theories of Punishment | p. 48 |
| Epilogue to Part One | p. 56 |
| A Strange Liking: Our Admiration for Criminals | p. 57 |
| Prologue to Part Two | p. 59 |
| Reluctant Admiration: The Forms of Our Conflict over Criminals | p. 64 |
| Rationalized Admiration: Overt Delight in Camouflaged Criminals | p. 70 |
| Repressed Admiration: Loathing As a Vicissitude of Attraction to Criminals | p. 102 |
| Conclusion to Part Two: This Unforeseen Partnership | p. 116 |
| In Slime and Darkness: The Metaphor of Filth in Criminal Justice | p. 119 |
| Prologue to Part Three | p. 121 |
| Eject Him Tainted Now: The Criminal As Filth in Western Culture | p. 123 |
| Projecting an Excrementitious Mass: The Metaphor of Filth in the History of Botany Bay | p. 147 |
| Stirring the Odorous Pile: Vicissitudes of the Metaphor in Britain and the United States | p. 171 |
| Conclusion to Part Three: Metaphor Understood | p. 185 |
| Conclusion: The Romanticization of Criminals and the Defense against Despair | p. 188 |
| Appendix | p. 195 |
| Notes | p. 197 |
| Bibliography | p. 243 |
| Index | p. 263 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780814718810
ISBN-10: 0814718817
Audience:
General
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 280
Published: 1st September 1999
Publisher: New York University Press
Country of Publication: US
Dimensions (cm): 22.73 x 15.01
x 1.85
Weight (kg): 0.38
