Narrating the Prison: Role and Representation in Charles Dickens' Novels, Twentieth-Century Fiction, and Film By Jan Alber

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments and Typographical Conventions

Chapter I: Introduction

Chapter II: What is a Prison?

The 'Old' and the 'New' Prison System in Great Britain

The 'Birth' of the Penitentiary in the United States

The Experience of Imprisonment

Chapter III: The Dark Dungeons in Charles Dickens's Novels and their Film Adaptations

The Prison as All-Embracing Shadow in Little Dorrit

- Prisons, Inmates, and the Prison Experience

- The Prison as World and Forms of Metaphorical Imprisonment

- The Prison and the Novel's Narrative Structure

"I Hope You Care to Be Recalled to Life?": Incarceration in A Tale of Two Cities

- The Imprisonment of Dr. Manette

- Charles Darnay's Time in Prison

- The Rulers Who Run the Prisons

The Internalization of the Prison in Great Expectations

- Pip's Guilt Complex in the Novel

- The Prison and Interiority in the Film

- Two Views on Mental Confinement

Chapter IV: Legitimating the Prison – Reproducing Cultural Hegemonies: Prison Narratives of the Twentieth Century

Critical Counter-Discourse or Pro-Prison Propaganda?

Narrating Prisoners and Prison Settings in Novels and Films

- The Prison Population in Fictional Prison Narratives

- Prison Settings in Novels and Films

- The Representation of Minds and Bodies in "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" and its Film Version

- Inmate Interiority in "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"

The Prison as a Testing Ground for Masculinity: The Process of Becoming an Insider

The Monotonous Routine Cycle of Traditional Disciplinary Prisons

Prison Violence and 'Homosexual' Rape as Forms of Symbolic 'Feminization'

The Prisoner as 'Abject' – The Madness of the 'Hole'

The Guards or the 'Other' Prisoners

Chapter V: Prison Metaphors in Novels and Films of the Twentieth Century

'Positive' and 'Negative' Metaphors of Imprisonment

- The Prison as Womb, Tomb, and Homosocial Club

- Forms of Rehabilitation and Positive Prison Images

- Disciplinary Prisons as Cages for Wild Animals

- The Prison as Hell

The Prison as World – The World as Prison

- Conformism and Individualism in Prison

- The Class System in Prison versus Class as a Prison

- Racial Oppression in Prison versus Society as Prison

- Is the Whole World a Boring Prison?

Chapter VI: Conclusion

Bibliography

Index