Legge, pulsionalità, scrittura. L'immaginario carcerario nella letteratura francese contemporanea

The doctor's degree investigates the different representations of the prison imaginary in the French twentieth century, examining closely the three declinations assumed by the penitentiary during the century: law, pulsionality and writing. Beginning from Michel Foucault's famous essay Surveiller et punir, the study shows how in the works of many French authors such as, for example, Genet, Céline, Frégni, Malet and Aubry, the notion of “heterotopia” is deeply connected to the images of prison as “law space”, “pulsionality space” and “writing space”. The work avails itself of a multidisciplinary approach which analyzes the space of the twentieth century prison through a methodological formulation based on different notes (literary criticism, social sciences, history, visual and juridical studies), beginning from the assumption that any subject, literature included, can be understood and completely investigated only by connecting the different branches of knowledge and only by demolishing the barriers which separate the disciplines. Moreover, even if it's a specialistic work in French studies, the degree sometimes avails itself of a comparatistic approach, because of its thematic formulation. That's the reason why the study treats both French authors and writers coming from other countries and cultures, such as, for example, Pellico, Wilde and Kafka.