The representation of prison takes an important part in Jean Genet’s work, both at the intra-textual level - prison is one of the most important matrixes of writing in number of exhibits and novels – at at the extra-text level, since prison is part of Jean Genet’s legend.However, between the omnipresence in literature and biographical realities, there is a gap which raises question of literary powers of prison. Indeed, only two works were written in prison: Notre-Dame des fleurs and Miracle de la Rose. These two works, by creating a mirror of literary and ethical issues related to writing in prison, are half-way through social thought – which can be explained with Michel Foucault’s work Surveiller et punir – and poetic creation based on the concept of heterotopia as the philosopher develops it in Des espaces autres.Notre-Dame des fleurs and Miracle de la rose allow an interrogation about the implementation of a representation of prison halfway between the reproduction of social reality and a fantasy projection of times, places and literature itself, on the walls of the jail. With the fertility offered, for the literary critic, by the notion of heterotopia, we will highlight a key dimension of Jean Genet’s poetic; shifts from one era to another and superposition of heterotopic spaces lead to the ethical question about the social structures through the literary scandal and the fantasy.The anachronistic dimension can explain the foundations of an ethical challenge manifested by the author. This posture has literary implications, since the novel tends to become a theatrical scene, reviving the tragic tradition, in which the reader has to play the spectator role and, in that way, opposes to the incommunicado imposed by the penal institution. The literary, therefore, calls for an experience of transgression and transmission, without the knowledge of power, and leads the reader to participate, against his will, in the glorification of the criminal in a literary system which borrows from other eras.