ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a theoretical introduction to literary collage and gives an overview of its most important examples in twentieth-century Anglophone poetry and prose. It begins by proposing a definition of literary collage as a work meeting the following formal criteria: the use of heterogeneous, fragmentary and conflicting components; the absence (or serious disruption) of linear plot development; and the incorporation of a sizeable proportion of appropriated material. Following a historical outline of collage practice since Picasso and Braque, the chapter considers the poetics and politics of the collage method. It then goes on to present a brief survey of literary collage from T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to William Burroughs and Kathy Acker. Finally, the chapter introduces two methodological approaches – multimodality studies and Rhetorical Structure Theory – which can be applied to the analysis of literary collage.