ABSTRACT
Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writing
and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representation
and formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature,
textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-critical
methodologies. It offers scholarly essays exploring prison writing
in relation to wartime internment, political imprisonment, resistance and
independence creation, regimes of terror, and personal narratives of development
and awakening that grapple with race, class and gender. Cutting
across geospatial divides while drawing on nation- and region-specific expertise,
it asks readers to connect the questions, examples and challenges
arising from prison writing and writing about imprisonment within the
UK and the USA, but also across continental Europe, Stalinist Russia, the
Americas, Africa and the Middle East. It also includes critical reflection
pieces from authors, editors, educators and theatre practitioners with experience
of the fraught, testing and potentially inspiring links between prison
and the literary world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |19 pages
Problems and Silences
part |36 pages
PoWs and Purges
chapter 2|17 pages
German Military Internees Writing the First World War
part |46 pages
Prison Spaces and Nation (Re)Making
chapter 5|17 pages
Writing from Robben Island
part |49 pages
Censorship, Advocacy and Text Creation
chapter 7|16 pages
“His Enemy’s Language”
part |36 pages
From Life to Fiction
chapter 11|18 pages
Anarcha-Feminism, Prison and Utopia
part |30 pages
Women, Theatre and Clean Break
chapter 13|10 pages
Unlocking Potential
part |20 pages
Literary Workshops