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  • Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons: The Unconscious Meanings of Crime and Punishment
  • Book
  • Martha Grace Duncan
  • 1996
  • Published by: NYU Press
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summary

An ex-convict struggles with his addictive yearning for prison. A law-abiding citizen broods over his pleasure in violent, illegal acts. A prison warden loses his job because he is so successful in rehabilitating criminals. These are but a few of the intriguing stories Martha Grace Duncan examines in her bold, interdisciplinary book Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons.
Duncan writes: "This is a book about paradoxes and mingled yarns - about the bright sides of dark events, the silver linings of sable clouds." She portrays upright citizens who harbor a strange liking for criminal deeds, and criminals who conceive of prison in positive terms: as a nurturing mother, an academy, a matrix of spiritual rebirth, or a refuge from life's trivia. In developing her unique vision, Duncan draws on literature, history, psychoanalysis, and law. Her work reveals a nonutopian world in which criminals and non-criminals--while injuring each other in obvious ways--nonetheless live together in a symbiotic as well as an adversarial relationship, needing each other, serving each other, enriching each other's lives in profound and surprising fashion.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. pp. c-ii
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  1. Title Page
  2. p. iii
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  1. Copyright Page
  2. pp. iv-vi
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Preface and Acknowledgments
  2. pp. ix-xii
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-6
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  1. PART ONE Cradled on the Sea: Positive Images of Prison and Theories of Punishment
  1. CHAPTER 1 A Thousand Leagues Above: Prison As a Refuge from the Prosaic
  2. pp. 9-23
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  1. CHAPTER 2 Cradled on the Sea: Prison As a Mother Who Provides and Protects
  2. pp. 24-31
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  1. CHAPTER 3 To Die and Become: Prison As a Matrix of Spiritual Rebirth
  2. pp. 32-37
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  1. CHAPTER 4 Flowers Are Flowers: Prison As a Place Like Any Other
  2. pp. 38-43
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  1. CHAPTER 5 Methodological Issues
  2. pp. 44-47
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  1. CHAPTER 6 Positive Images of Prison and Theories of Punishment
  2. pp. 48-55
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  1. Epilogue to Part One
  2. p. 56
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  1. PART TWO A Strange Liking: Our Admiration for Criminals
  1. Prologue to Part Two
  2. pp. 59-63
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  1. CHAPTER 7 Reluctant Admiration: The Forms of Our Conflict over Criminals
  2. pp. 64-69
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  1. CHAPTER 8 Rationalized Admiration: Overt Delight in Camouflaged Criminals
  2. pp. 70-101
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  1. CHAPTER 9 Repressed Admiration: Loathing As a Vicissitude of Attraction to Criminals
  2. pp. 102-115
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  1. Conclusion to Part Two: This Unforeseen Partnership
  2. pp. 116-118
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  1. PART THREE In Slime and Darkness: The Metaphor of Filth in Criminal Justice
  1. Prologue to Part Three
  2. pp. 121-122
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  1. CHAPTER 10 Eject Him Tainted Now: The Criminal As Filth in Western Culture
  2. pp. 123-146
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  1. CHAPTER 11 Projecting an Excrementitious Mass: The Metaphor of Filth in the History of Botany Bay
  2. pp. 147-170
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  1. CHAPTER 12 Stirring the Odorous Pile: Vicissitudes of the Metaphor in Britain and the United States
  2. pp. 171-184
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  1. Conclusion to Part Three: Metaphor Understood
  2. pp. 185-187
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  1. Conclusion: The Romanticization of Criminals and the Defense against Despair
  2. pp. 188-194
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  1. Appendix
  2. pp. 195-196
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 197-242
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  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 243-262
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 263-bc
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