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Full Description
This volume is a study of the interdisciplinary nature of prison escape tales and their impact on European cultural identity in the eighteenth century. Prison escape narratives are reflections of the tension between the individual's potential happiness via freedom and the confines of the social order. Contemporary readers identified with the prisoner, who, like them suffered the injustices of an absolutist regime. The state imprisons such renegades not just out of a desire to protect the public but more importantly to protect the state itself. Hence, prison escape tales can be linked with a revolutionary tendency: when free, such former detainees equipped with a pen openly and justly challenge the status quo, hoping to inspire their readers to do the same. Escape tales have had a considerable impact on cultural identity, because they embody the interdependent relationship between literature and myth on the one hand and literature and history on the other.
Contents
A Note on Translations
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Michael J. Mulryan and Denis Grélé
One A Model for Eighteenth-Century Récits d'évasion: Odysseus's Flight from Polyphemus's Cave
Michael J. Mulryan
Two The "Slippery Eel": Escape Episodes and Ideological Ambiguity in Eighteenth-Century Criminal Biographies, The Cases of Louis-Dominique Cartouche and John Sheppard
Léa Lebourg-Leportier
Three Having a Cage in Her Hand: Escaping Representations of Comtesse de La Motte-Valois
Claire Trévien
Four Du plaisir dans ma solitude: Finding Pleasure in the Prisons of Manon Lescaut
Rori Bloom
Five Utopia as a Prison: Escaping from the Land of Happiness in Tyssot de Patot's Les Voyages et Avantures de Jaques Massé
Denis Grélé
Conclusion
Michael J. Mulryan and Denis Grélé
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors
