PANOPTICON • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Panopticon

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Panopticon

noun

An area where everything is visible.

A circular prison with cells distributed around a central surveillance station; proposed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791.

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Etymology of 'Panopticon'

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"Panopticon" Quotes from Famous Books

... not of Newgate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken from Burn's Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his own imagination in the stocks, and his Muse, like Malvolio, "wears cruel garters." He collects all the petty vices of the human heart, and superintends, as in a panopticon, a select circle of rural malefactors. He makes out the poor to be as bad as the rich—a sort of vermin for the others to hunt down and trample upon, and this he thinks a good piece of work. With him there are but ...

— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

Words linked to "Panopticon" : area, prison, panoptical, saleroom, prison house, salesroom, showroom