An aleatory composition technique in which existing texts are physically cut into fragments and rearranged, often at random, into new sequences, developed as a literary method by Brion Gysin and popularized by William S. Burroughs as a way of breaking linear narrative and linguistic habit.
Facts
Place of OriginParis, late 1950s, developed by Brion Gysin and adopted by William S. Burroughs. 1 StructureNo fixed form; composed by physically or procedurally cutting existing text into fragments and reassembling them, often through chance operations, into a new sequence. 1 Notable ExampleWilliam S. Burroughs's The Soft Machine and Nova Express, composed using the cut-up method. 1 Connections
Associated With
Burroughs, with Brion Gysin, developed and popularized the literary cut-up technique, applying it in Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine.
Form Of Genre
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press
Wikipedia: Cut-up technique
Lead paragraph
The cut-up technique (or découpé in French) is an aleatory narrative technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text.
Technique section
Cut-up is performed by taking a finished and fully linear text and cutting it in pieces with a few or single words on each piece.
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