The prison and the American imagination

by Smith, Caleb

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Title Statements

Full title :The prison and the American imagination / Caleb Smith.

Summary

How did a nation so famously associated with freedom become internationally identified with imprisonment? After the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and in the midst of a dramatically escalating prison population, the question is particularly urgent. In this timely, provocative study, Caleb Smith argues that the dehumanization inherent in captivity has always been at the heart of American civil society. Exploring legal, political, and literary texts - including the works of Dickinson, Melville, and Emerson - Smith shows how alienation and self-reliance, social death and spiritual rebirth, torture and penitence came together in the prison, a scene for the portrayal of both gothic nightmares and romantic dreams. Demonstrating how the "cellular soul" has endured since the antebellum age, The Prison and the American Imagination offers a passionate and haunting critique of the very idea of solitude in American life.

Edition Statements

Publication Date:©2009.

Publication Statements

Publisher(s):Yale University Press
Place of Publication:New Haven
Language:eng
Publication Date:©2009.

The Physical Object

Description:1 online resource (x, 258 pages) : : illustrations

Edition Identifiers

ISBN:9780300156300, 0300156308, 0300141661, 9780300141665, 9786612353246, 6612353244
oclc:ocn586098252
LC Classification:PS169.I47
Dewey Decimal:810.9/9206927

Civil death and carceral life -- Cadaverous triumphs -- The meaning of solitude -- Captivity and consciousness -- Mississippi voices -- Frontiers of captivity.

Subjects

American literature American literature -- History and crit… Criticism, interpretation, etc Emprisonnement -- Dans la littérature Imprisonment in literature LITERARY CRITICISM -- American Literary Criticism -- General Prisoners -- Intellectual life Prisoners -- Intellectual life. -- Unit… Prisonniers -- Vie intellectuelle. -- É… Prisons dans la littérature Prisons in literature United States