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2) “Also, it's nonsense to apply a film term to poetry and then to argue
that this application says something about the chronology of poetry. I've
seen film terms used to discuss a narrative poem by Catullus, although
manifestly the Romans didn't have cinema. And Rimbaud made leaps in his work
that could be called jump cuts, but might just be a mimesis of thought.”
Yes, but if one does this to argue that a later innovation was already
present in the past, without making sure that the comparison is accurate,
then it just leads to relativism. Saying, for instance, that Shakespeare
used jump-cuts, when what you mean was he used quick scene changes just
muddies the water.
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Jeffrey, you're confusing two separate things (if not three) -- (i) the term
applied to certain film techniques ("jump cut"), (ii) the techniques
themselves, which pre-date the first use of the term, and (iii) the
metaphorical extension of the term from its origins in cinematography to
literature.
The term is first used (see the OED) in 1953:
//
1953 K. REISZ Technique Film Editing 280 *Jump cut, cut which breaks
continuity of time by jumping forward from one part of an action to another
obviously separated from the first by an interval of time.
\\
This is also a little more consonant than your own definition (somewhat
loaded in order to allow a link to Cubism?) with what ended up as being
pointed to in Shakespeare in this thread.
The metaphorical extension is first recorded in 1966, so if you're objecting
to this, perhaps you'd be advised to invest in a time machine:
//
1966 Punch 6 July 26/2 The restless, *jump-cutting style is sometimes
disconcertingone takes a second or two to realise that an expected bridging
passage has been waived.
\\
Personally, I'm inclined to agree with you to the extent that I'd see the
metaphorical extension of the term "jump cut" as more appropriate to
Shakespeare's technique in the Sonnets than in his plays. It certainly took
longer for the innovations present in the Sonnets to be absorbed into the
literary tradition than it did for the plays.
Robin
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