The strong association between prison writing and writing on walls, whether by graffiti or carving, is as true of Tudor and Stuart England as of other times and places. Yet even if prison-writers associated themselves with the idea of writing on a wall, they need not have done so in reality. This article considers the topos in the writings and afterlife of the Catholic priest, poet and martyr John Ingram, and asks whether it is to be taken at face value.Ingram’s verse, composed in Latin and mostly epigrammatic, survives in two contemporary manuscripts. The notion that the author carved his verses with a blunt knife on the walls of the Tower of London while awaiting death derives from a previous editorial interpretation of a prefatory sentence within the more authoritative manuscript of the two, traditionally held to be autograph. However, though several Tudor and Stuart inscriptions survive to this day on the walls of the Tower of London, no portions of Ingram’s verse are among them, nor any inscriptions of similar length and complexity. Ingram might instead have written his verse down in the usual way, using wall-carving as a metaphor for the difficulty of writing verse when undergoing incarceration and torture.1

中文翻译：

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墙上的文字？约翰英格拉姆的诗和天主教监狱写作的传播

无论是通过涂鸦还是雕刻，监狱书写和墙上书写之间的紧密联系在都铎王朝和斯图亚特英格兰以及其他时代和地方都是如此。然而，即使监狱作家将自己与在墙上写作的想法联系起来，他们实际上也不必这样做。这篇文章考虑了天主教神父、诗人和烈士约翰英格拉姆的著作和来世中的主题，并询问是否要从表面上理解它。英格拉姆的诗句以拉丁文创作，主要是警句，在两份当代手稿中得以保存。作者在等待死亡时用一把钝刀在伦敦塔的墙壁上雕刻了他的诗句，这一观点源于之前对两人的更权威手稿中的一个序言的编辑解释，传统上被认为是亲笔签名。然而，尽管伦敦塔的墙壁上至今还留存着几处都铎王朝和斯图亚特的铭文，但其中没有英格拉姆的诗句，也没有任何类似长度和复杂性的铭文。相反，英格拉姆可能会以通常的方式写下他的诗句，用墙壁雕刻来比喻在遭受监禁和折磨时写诗的困难。1