RT Book
T1 The prison and the American imagination
T2 Yale studies in English
A1 Smith, Caleb 1977-
LA English
PP New Haven, Conn. u.a.
PB Yale Univ. Press
YR 2009
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/59092995X
AB 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
NO Includes bibliographical references and index
CN PS169.I47
SN 9780300141665
SN 0300141661
K1 American literature : History and criticism
K1 Imprisonment in literature
K1 Prisoners : United States : Intellectual life
K1 Prisons in literature
K1 USA : Literatur : Gefängnis : Motiv
K1 USA : Literatur : Gefangener : Motiv