Sarah Colvin

Why should criminology care about literary fiction? Literature, life narratives and telling untellable stories

There is still-growing interest in narrative in the context of offender rehabilitation. Recent moves towards a ‘narrative criminology’ have referenced literary theory and the tools of literary criticism, and have demanded exchange with other disciplines. This article responds with an examination of how a humanities-informed literary critical analysis might complement and extend social science’s understanding of narrative work with offenders. The article analyses how and to what effect literary fiction is used in prisons and probation. Against the broader background of findings from prison literature programmes, it offers an in-depth analysis of the work of the Berlin prison theatre company aufBruch, from a literary critical as well as a narrative criminological perspective. With reference to Maruna’s notion of the ‘redemption script’ and more recent narrative criminology, as well as to literary and cognitive theory and experimental psychology, it is suggested that an understanding of how literary fiction ‘works’ may enhance the theory and practice of narrative work with offenders.

The rhetorical feminine : gender and orient on the German stage, 1647-1742

Introduction: Men, Rhetoric, and the Stage Note on Terminology and Orthography 1. The Rhetorical Feminine: (i) Women and Muslims in the Literary Imagination 2. The Rhetorical Feminine: (ii) Separating the Women from the Boys 3. Reading the Signs: Rhetorical loci and the Stage Semiotics 4. Persuasive Sounds: The Rhetoric of Words and Music 5. Persuasive Laughter: Carnival, Theatre, and Control Conclusion: Theatre and the Rhetoric of Otherness Bibliography Index

Mephistopheles, metaphors, and the problem of meaning in 'Faust'

Abstract One of the most powerful of human impulses is to look for meaning: to narrativize and interpret, to probe mysteries with hermeneutics. In Faust, Mephisto consistently seeks to undermine narrative, meaning, mystery, and the word; in the devils mouth language is functionalized as a manipulative tool or rhetorical game, and truth and lies are not merely complex but irrelevant categories. I am not the first person to suggest that another significant element in Mephistos project is the masculinization of Faust. Particularly in Part 2 we follow the process of Fausts seduction into achievement- and acquisition-driven activity. In that constant uproar of activity, Faust loses the feminine capacity for care: Sorge. I argue that Sorge is a redemptive force in the drama, and has more to do with Fausts mysterious salvation than is generally assumed. Personified Care enables his return to narrative and the associated engagement with meaning; in the end it is the word, not deed, that lifts Faust out of the devils realm and sets the stage for his redemption.

THE POWER IN THE TEXT READING WOMEN WRITING DRAMA

This essay looks at texts by women dramatists from around the turn of the last century. One of them, Elsa Bernstein-Porges, was well-known in her day and has to some extent survived in literary histories. The other two, Gertrud Prellwitz and Julie Ktihne, have remained almost entirely unknown. The ambiguity in the title is deliberate. I consider the effects of a masculinist literary discourse on women who wrote drama - traditionally the ‘masculine’ genre - as well as the importance of the ideological position and experience of the reader in any assessment of literary ‘value’. This leads me to try to analyse what it is that makes a text powerful - a moving or exciting reading experience - and to consider the significance of this in the context of feminist literary criticism.