The prison and the American imagination / Caleb Smith.

By:

Smith, Caleb, 1977- [author.]

Material type: Text

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780300156300
0300156308
0300141661
9780300141665
9786612353246
6612353244

Subject(s): Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Prison and the American imagination.DDC classification:

810.9/9206927 22

LOC classification:

PS169.I47 S65 2009eb

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

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

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.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Materials specified	Status	Date due	Barcode
Electronic-Books	OPJGU Sonepat- Campus	E-Books EBSCO			Available

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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

Print version record.

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.

English.

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