TY  - GEN
T1  - The prison and the American imagination
T2  - Yale studies in English.
A1  - Smith, Caleb, 1977-
LA  - English
PP  - New Haven
PB  - Yale University Press
YR  - 2009
UL  - https://ebooks.jgu.edu.in/Record/ebsco_acadsubs_ocn586098252
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.
OP  - 258
CN  - PS169.I47 S65 2009eb
SN  - 9780300156300
SN  - 0300156308
SN  - 0300141661
SN  - 9780300141665
SN  - 1282353241
SN  - 9781282353244
KW  - American literature : History and criticism.
KW  - Imprisonment in literature.
KW  - Prisoners : United States : Intellectual life.
KW  - Prisons in literature.
KW  - Emprisonnement dans la littérature.
KW  - Prisonniers : États-Unis : Vie intellectuelle.
KW  - Prisons dans la littérature.
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM : American : General.
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM : General.
KW  - American literature
KW  - Imprisonment in literature
KW  - Prisoners : Intellectual life
KW  - Prisons in literature
KW  - United States
KW  - Criticism, interpretation, etc.
ER  -