La funzione simbolica del carcere nell’immaginario letterario e cinematografico americano

Abstract

Few cultures are obsessed with the theme of prison like the American one. Our thesis is that this obsession is the result of a particular conception of space that has settled in America starting from two original archetypes: Puritanism and Frontier. From the point of view of the frontier, the jail is the dystopian outcome of the absence of space that produces unmediable conflicts. For puritanism, the prison symbolically represents the dark and diabolical side that must be permanently delimited and controlled until the end of time.