Bosman’s Cold Stone Jug and the Genesis of the South African Prison Memoir

Abstract

This article considers Herman Charles Bosman’s memoir, Cold Stone Jug, as an early and influential prototype for the important genre of South African prison literature in the twentieth century. The memoir is attentive to the ways in which the material space of the Benthamite prison dictates social relationships and rituals, and becomes psychologically internalized. The article performs a close analysis of Bosman’s Cold Stone Jug in order to show how the distinctive chronotopes of the prison find expression in narrative form.