SourceWatch.info Indexes Home Subject Index Title Index Author Index Chronological Index Dewey Index Library of Congress Index Experts & News SOURCES - Experts & spokespersons News Releases Event Calendar Arts Business Communications Educatiion Government Health Human Rights International Labour Law Media Media relations Nature Politics Media relations Religion Science Sexuality Sports Sources Bookshelf Universities & Colleges Health Practitioners Other Resources Getting Publicity Membership Form Be an Affiliate Sources Shop Media Directory Government Directory Twitter Connexions Library Subject Index Connexions Library Title Index Google Scholar ibiblio Online Books Page Project Gutenberg Radical Digressions Wikipedia

Writers in Prison Davies, Ioan Publisher:  Between the Lines, Toronto, Canada Year Published:  1990   Pages:  274pp   ISBN:  ISBN 0-921284-42-X Resource Type:  Book An analysis of the work of imprisoned writers. Abstract:  Ioan Davies, a professor of sociology and political thought at York University has analyzed the prison writings of several well-known prisoners such as the Russian novelist, Solzhenitsyn, the playwright Jean Genet, and Vaclav Havel, Czech dramatist, poet and essayist and now President of Czechoslovakia. Although Davies draws his sample from writers who were incarcerated for political or religious reasons, their stories or "fragmentary scratchings on the walls of a cell", form a folk-history of incarceration, exile and slavery. In examining the themes that pervade prison literature, Davies develops a philosophy of incarceration which contains the distinctive stories of prisoners such as Black Americans or women. Their personalized accounts are shown to articulate the problems of the wider prison community. By underlining the difficulties in entering and understanding the context of the writer because of our cultural and social biases, Davies shows us the importance of doing so. Using examples of prisoners in "riven situations", Davies points to the pervasiveness of military control, armed police surveillance and the political opposition to both in the world and reflects on the roots of this violence at the base of Western civilization. His work uses the vehicle of prison literature to impel us to find alternatives to prison and violence. Topics Censorship Incarceration Intellectuals Political Prisoners/Prisoners of Conscience Prisoners Prisons Writers

SourceWatch.info
c/o Sources, 812A Bloor Street West, Suite 201, Toronto, ON M6G 1L9.
Phone: (416) 964-7799 FAX: (416) 964-8763

© Sources 1977-2011. The information provided is copyright and may not be reproduced
in any form or by any means (whether electronic, mechanical or photographic), or stored in an
electronic retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher. The content may not be
resold, republished, or redistributed. Indexing and search applications by Ulli Diemer and Chris DeFreitas.