Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons

by Duncan, Martha Grace

• ISBN13: 9780814718803
• ISBN10: 0814718809
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-11-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

Literature... provides Duncan a rich field in which to explore our 'reluctant,' 'rationalized,' and sometimes outright 'admiration' for the 'noble bandit.' ...The real drama of...Duncan's discussion of metaphor, however, comes with the vivid historical pictograph that gives her book a stirring climax....Duncan readily solves the mystery [of the founding of Botany Bay as a penal colony]. --New York Times Book Review"Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisonsis 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 QuarterlyProfessor Martha Duncan has written an important, creative work. Her book is elegant, and solidly grounded inliterature, psychoanalysis and law. --Legal Studies FormA complex book on the subject of incarceration that embraces both the actual experience of prisoners and the projection in literature of positive prison fantasies. Drawing on a very rich reservoir of illustrations, Duncan offers fascinating developments that will affect the readers' views on the timely question of crime and punishment. --Victor Brombert, author ofThe Romantic PrisonAn 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 bookRomantic 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.

Author Biography

Martha Grace Duncan is Professor of Law at Emory University.

Table of Contents

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
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