Writing Behind Bars: Literary Contexts and the Authority of Carceral Experience

Abstract

Many of the recurrent ideas, attributes, and tactics associated with prison writing are found in a work widely regarded as the final testimony of Boethius, a sixth-century prisoner. In this essay, Rivkah Zim shows how Boethius came to terms with adversity by reaffirming his values and explores the ways in which this paradigmatic text exploits the circumstance of imprisonment to enhance its authority. Three early modern case studies help refine criteria for assessing the authority of carceral experience, and an overview of several kinds of prisoners' writings, including those of Thomas More and John Bunyan, shows how adversity was exploited to promote political strategies. Finally, Zim considers some modern critical approaches to prison writing and proposes a conceptual framework for what we might call a politics of prison writing.